


Eat, Drink and Be Marri(ed)

by WaldosAkimbo



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Fix It Fic, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Hand Jobs, Happy Ending, M/M, Multi, Panic Attack, Post Uprising, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Precursors, Recovery, Self Harm, Smut, Whump, blowjob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-05-08 09:08:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 92,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14690913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaldosAkimbo/pseuds/WaldosAkimbo
Summary: Following the events of Pacific Rim: Uprising, Newton has finally been "cleared" to leave the PPDC. He has been put under the watch of Hermann Gottlieb, who is adamant about Newton's recovery. Because the two men loved each other and they are finally, finally going to find that happiness.Primarily in Hermann's POV, the first chapter is setting it up and then the next chapters are knocking them down. (So, it's fluff before it leads to the good stuff. And by good stuff, I mean a slow goddamn burn of pain before we strangle a happy ending from my wretched hand!).A warning tag for self harm, PTSD, panic attacks, and blood. It will be visible and it will be addressed, so take care of yourself and if it would be harmful to read it, move along, my friend. It is a-okay.





	1. Together, man. With You

“You know I had, like, this _really_ nice apartment with a view and everything? I mean, glass windows the size of elephants, dude, like. You should have seen it.”

Newton dropped the meager duffel bag onto the hardwood floor, a soft thump that was more telling of his paltry belongings than the size of the duffel bag alone. He stretched, tugging at the bottom of his shirt to keep it over his stomach—he had been strange about that lately. Long sleeves despite the warm summer ahead of them. Layers of clothes that were clearly stained with sweat. Extra bracelets and high collars.

“You should have seen it,” he said softly, an absent look behind his thick black frames. The reminder of a brief invitation during the last hours of his struggle to keep up, keep to the surface, and _beg_ someone to please, please, _please_ just come to his doorstep to meet “Alice.” Take his hand. Help.

“Well, it’s what they gave us,” Hermann answered sourly behind him, thumping his cane as he moved into the kitchen.

“Sure, but. It sucks.”

It didn’t “suck.” But they weren’t going to shell out for a penthouse in Tokyo. Not for the little experiment gone wrong and the fool bastard who took him under his broken wing…metaphors were not Hermann’s strong suit. He waved that thought away and pulled open a cabinet.

“You’re only spoiled, Newton, believe me.”

And, of course, Newton scoffed at that, offended. Playing at offended, most likely. “Spoiled? Dude, I saw where you grew up, okay.”

“Yes, and you understand spoiled more perfectly than I, Mr. Elephant-Sized-Windows-Flat.”

“Don’t pull that card on me.”

“Don’t insult my kitchen,” Hermann muttered back.

Oh, it was a nice kitchen, too. Sure, the location the PPDC had granted them wasn’t ideal and the view was of another concrete building with ashy stains and graffiti, but the kitchen. That had been a part of the negotiation and one that Hermann refused to budge on. Dug his heel in, you see. They could post seven men outside in the halls and in the flat across the alley with sniper rifles trained on them all hours of the day, but he was getting a bloody kitchen. End of story.

Well, not _end_ of story. Beginning, he reminded himself. This was a beginning.

“Like, am I offended it’s close to the ocean? A little,” Newton continued, removing his shoes one at a time and tossing them against the foyer wall. The foyer itself was clogged with hangars for various jackets and bags and backpacks. “I mean, I get it. The real-estate out here is cheap as hell, dude, but, like. I mean, I guess. I guess there’s nothing to worry about. Right? Like, there’s nothing to worry about. We’re fine. This is so fine. I said it. You said it. We’re fine. I’m fine. I am the finest fine I’ve ever been in—”

Newton, while rambling, had started rubbing the leather bracelets around his wrist. He stood up in his socks, pacing back and forth, letting his words tumble out with the grace and care of a child tossing a hand grenade. And this was most definitely Newton doing this. He always had an energy to him, even through the dark and the pain, that was akin to licking a battery. But his rambling became frantic and the turning of his bracelets a compulsion that would rub his wrists raw. They must still be bruised from the restraints of that chair Lambert and Pentecost insisted upon. They had warned Hermann about this little loop he might go into. Flashbacks would be common place. Doubt would be imminent. As though Hermann didn’t understand the delicate web of madness, egomania, Rockstar persona, and unredeemable fragile hope that made up this particular scientist.

Hermann saw the signs faster than he could react. He abandoned the kitchen with a skillet out on a cold stove and deftly made his way back across the apartment to grab Newton’s elbow and hold onto him, damn the twinge in his leg and damn the look in his eye and damn the panic shivering through Newton. That electricity. No matter what, it had to be expelled.

“Stop,” he said softly.

Newton looked up. Looked directly at him with those magnified blue eyes. They had joked once that Newton had Kaiju-blood eyes because they were so blue. That had only been a joke once and now it held a strange ringing truth to it that was as painful as any other thing they’d survived. The Precursors may have infected his mind, to a point, but they poured something inside Newton. And it shone through, just a little. Just in the eyes.

“Yeah, well….” Newton laughed, gripping his neck. When he laughed then, as desperate as it was to show off he was fine, it crinkled up those eyes, adding lines to his face that Hermann could only think about tracing with his fingers and perhaps his li….

He let go of Newton’s arm. The man was laughing so surely, he was alright.

“Alright. Alright, you’re right. Alright. What’re we doing, Herms, huh?” Newton held onto Hermann’s arm this time. The contact was…refreshing. And warm. “We cookin’ up money, honey?”

“That…what?”

“Ah, I dunno,” Newton answered with a raspy “baaah” as they went back into the kitchen together. He only let go of Hermann when he was around the island, nose deep in the refrigerator to pull out ingredients. Newton took up a stool, resting his elbows on the counter. Hermann didn’t even have to look to know that Newton was pulling his sleeves and adjusting his collar to make sure that his article of clothing was just so. Just perfectly placed so no erroneous flash of a tattoo could be seen. “But, seriously. What are we cooking?”

“ _I_ am making a pancetta and brussels sprouts linguini and _you_ are going to finish up that lesson Dr. Sambre sent over on the tablet this morning.”

“Dude.”

“No, I don’t want to hear it.”

“ _Dude._ ”

“I saw the email come through; it’s vital we get the lessons over with so that we just might get, oh, I don’t know, one security officer off our detail and sent back to the PPDC so they can stop wasting their money like the overabundant capitalist pigs they—”

“…dude!”

Hermann finally looked up. He was firmly grasping a heavy block of salty pancetta like he might choke it. The meat was a beautiful bacon-like ribbon and cured without any erroneous spices. Hermann preferred simple ingredients as his base point, adding to the dish to “bring out” the natural flavors.  Did his mouth water? No, because he wasn’t a savage swayed by the simple delights of food and the science needed to combine into a delicious meal. But he did enjoy it. He enjoyed the task of finding the perfect produce, of combining them in the perfect dish. It was an artform that he refused to call art but participated in nonetheless.

Still, he looked up.

“Yes?” he asked calmly, setting his jaw as he watched Newton across the island.

The man had his sleeves now pulled down _over_ his fingers and tucked them up under his chin. He smiled again and, for a moment, a brief little image of grazing those deeply entrenched laugh-lines made something stir. It made Hermann salivate.

“No, just, like, you’re getting so worked up about it. It’s cute, man. You’re worried.” Newton laughed lightly, bunching up the fistful of his sleeves to curl around his fists. “Just, you have knives in there and you’re handling the food. I’ll go do the lesson, I promise. Just don’t hurt yourself, alright?” He pouted, a mocking and overly sweet face. “Please?”

Hermann rolled his eyes in kind. “Yes, _fine_. As long as you finish the lesson plan.”

“I will. I will. Do your cooking, man, I won’t bug ya until I’m done.”

“You best not.”

“I best won’t,” Newton sang back, hopping off the bar stool.

Newton went padding through the apartment like he’d already lived it in for months and knew exactly where everything was. In time, he would, of course. In time. Luckily, Hermann had been assigned the place for a few months during the deprogramming and his affects were everywhere. Clothing. Electronics. Chalkboards, lord, yes, he had chalkboards even at home. But that added to the comfort too. For Newton, it was as apparent as when he first “woke up” from the Precursors. It was real.

“Can I use yours?” Newton called out near the heavily-abused couch.

There was a time that such an item would have bothered Hermann for the simple grace of its shabbiness. But the cushions were so comfortable and sometimes he would stretch out on it and give his poor sodding leg a rest for the afternoon. That, and the couch _screamed_ Newton. Not the Newton with the tailored suits and designer haircuts or what have you, but the Newton from back in their k-science days, arguing until the early hours of the day bled over to the next about some theoretical process to boost a jaeger suit or divulge the secrets hidden within the kaiju samples.

“Pardon?” Hermann asked after a time, realizing he’d been daydreaming.

“Your tablet. Mine’s…I dunno. Can I use yours?” Newton asked again as he found it plugged into the wall. He held it up, wagging it back and forth in the second half of his plea. Puppy-dog eyes. Seriously? “Won’t even mess with your passwords this time. C’mon, dude, I promise.”

And if he did it on Hermann’s, then he couldn’t hide his answers. He wouldn’t have to ask Dr. Sambre how it was progressing; he could simply scroll through and see for himself….

Hermann sighed and rolled his eyes to play up that he was annoyed, of course, but he nodded at last. “Yes, fine, but don’t break it.”

“Yeah right, dude. What am I gonna do, chuck it out the window?”

“If you _do_ , I’ll—”

“Relax, ya big baby.”

Newton curled up on the far side of the couch, tucking his feet beneath himself and squeezing his elbows in between his knees in an awkward little ball. His shoulders and back became a shield. He tapped in Hermann’s old password easily, swiping to the emails until he had open the checklist and usual text fields that came with Dr. Sambre’s weekly lesson plan. And he got to work. Hermann, too, got to work.

\---

The smoke alarm didn’t go off once, which was a miracle, even if Hermann had to open the window and fan a towel at the ceiling once when he nearly burned the pancetta. He put together two plates, hideous green crockery things with little insipid daisies painted in the glaze. They were something his grandmother would have gifted to him for a wedding present. The dishes themselves were portioned out with exaggerated symmetry, twirled together and topped with grated parmesan. Nothing fancy. Nothing worthy of a respectable restaurant. It was only food to feed them, stop obsessing how the garnish, _you don’t even_ use _garnish, Hermann, you sap_! Hermann clenched his jaw tightly and set the dishes out on the bar.

“Lunch,” he called out, casually looking at the window. “Perhaps dinner. I can’t…tell…since we don’t face the sun on this side.”

“Dinner,” Newton answered gently from the couch. He looked sleepy, one fist hidden away in his sleeve that he used to prop up his cheek against the sofa armrest. His eyes were bleary and his mouth a little droopy from forcing himself to focus for too long.

“Is it really?” Hermann asked and twisted around a wristwatch. Nearly six pm! “Well, then, dinner. Is served.”

“Yeah,” Newton called out in an _I’ll be there in a minute._ He scrubbed at his eyes, leaning harder on his knuckle while he tapped away at the tablet.

“Before it gets cold,” Hermann said, almost a question, a little hint of pride and worry sneaking in there at the end.

“Mmhmm.”

Hermann grabbed his cane away from the counter with one hand and scooped up one of the plates in the other before he started over towards the couch. Standing in the kitchen so long had made him stiff and he had to work it out of his knee as he walked before he sank down on the couch next to Newton with a heavy sigh. Newton made a little startled noise, sitting up and pushing his glasses up his forehead.

“Whuh—”

“You’re going to eat,” Hermann started, holding out the dish. “You’re going to put that down for now and you’re going to enjoy this simple meal.”

“Oh, Herms, man, I’m, like—”

“Put. The iPad. Down.”

“Yes, _sir_ ,” Newton said, looking mildly offended. Mildly…something else. He grinned, freeing his fingers from his sleeves to take the plate. “Did you want me to salute you? I’m not gonna salute you, that’s stupid. Where’s your plate?”

“I left it on the counter,” Hermann said simply, jutting out his chin.

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Yeah, but _why_?”

“Because, I was bringing food to you. Be grateful! My knee is killing me and now I have to get up and go all the way over there and grab it up and bring it all the way _back_ over here just to make sure you eat and I eat with you and—”

Newton set the plate down on the cluttered coffee table before him.

“What are you doing? Didn’t I _just_ state that I brought that over for you?”

But instead of answering, Newton crawled closer to Hermann’s space, placing his palms flat on the slightly wrinkled and musty-smelling button-down shirt. Hermann’s voice was gone instantly, if for a moment, his breath catching as he glared over at Newton. Newton only moved in closer, slow and careful like a cat on the prowl.

“What _are_ you—”

Hermann thought he was going to die. That was hyperbolic up to a point, but the way that Newton bent over him, his head moving closer to Hermann’s groin than he had ever imagined it would go, he felt his heart beating so hard that he assumed cardiac arrest would follow. Newton’s head kept descending, the hand on Hermann’s chest surely aware of the heavy pulse of a racing heart, before he connected his lips very gently to Hermann’s kneecap.

Oh. _Ohhhh_.

Instead of getting up from there, Newton laid down on the couch, tucking his knees up to his chest and resting his head on Hermann’s good leg.

_Oh, good Lord._

“I’m sorry, man,” Newton said in that distant voice of his again, part of him here, part of him lightyears away. “I’m sorry. That your leg hurts. And, like, that you did all this work. I’m sorry you got stuck with me and with a bunch of jarheads pointing assault rifles at our windows and I’m sorry about your leg again and I’m sorry—”

“Hush.”

A simple command. A quiet command. One that Newton reluctantly took. Hermann leaned forward and grabbed the plate back up, resting it on his free thigh. He awkwardly twirled up some of the pasta onto a fork with the help of a spoon and when it was coiled up tight, he held it near Newton’s mouth. “Eat. Please.”

“You’re seriously gonna—”

“Yes.”

A stubbled chin wobbled, ever so slightly. Hermann pretended not to notice. He simply fed Newton his dinner, until the man got up on his own and sat properly, both feet on the floor and everything. At some point Newton stood and promised profusely that he was only getting the other plate. Which he did. And while he did, Hermann twirled up another forkful and ate a bite, scraping his lips across the tines.

“It’s good, man. I don’t remember you cooking this good before.”

“Lots of Chinese food take out back then,” Hermann reminded him around a mouthful.

“Oh, right? That little place with the gray cat in the window? Didn’t they name it something, like, super ridiculous?”

“Meatball?” Hermann guessed.

“No, it wasn’t Meatball. It was like…Mushu or…Mushroom?” Newton took the seat right next to Hermann, their thigh’s touching. He leaned over on his elbows, cradling the plate of linguini in one hand. And then he snapped his fingers, sitting up like he’d been shocked. “Miso!”

“Miso,” Hermann grumbled out at the memory with a little twitch of a smile. “That’s right.”

“Dude, Miso was mean, though. Like.”

Newton waffled his hand before he stabbed at the pasta, forcing a huge tangled wad onto the end of his fork. He lifted it to his mouth, paused again. It dangled just below his bottom lip and his bright blue eyes slid back over to Hermann. He held up the fork to him.

“This is your plate. Right?”

Hermann looked between the food offered and the man who offered it. Very well. He had to mop up his chin afterwards, but he ate it all the same.

Eventually the two were more evenly sprawled out on the couch. Hermann let his bad leg stretch out in front of him, the cane knocked haphazardly against his knee. Newton had taken an even more relaxed stance, laying down with his head on Hermann’s thigh and his feet dangling on the armrest to the right of them. His hands swirled in exaggerated aerial moves above his head as they argued about their latest scientific impossibility.

“That’s what I’m saying!” he shouted, his voice picking up pitch and speed.

“That’s _not_ what you’re saying. You passed right over general laws of physics and Jabari’s Analytical Law of—”

“Oh my god, but you aren’t listening. You aren’t listening.”

“I’m not listening to rambling madness, you’re right.”

“No, okay, I get that the technology isn’t _exactly_ peer reviewed, but I’m telling you. You bypass the tenfold, you go straight for—”

“You can’t just… _break_ physics.”

Newton sat up suddenly, dragging his hands through his fluff of dark brown hair. “We’ve done it so many times, dude, what the hell are you even talking about?” He was smiling, which at this moment was akin to bearing his teeth in some primal threat display to get Hermann to submit, which he would not do when the man was talking _nonsense_. Newton shoved up the cuffs of his shirt to his elbows and tucked one leg under the other as he turned to face Hermann full on. He was excited. His arms flailing back and forth, orchestrating a whole chorus of preposterous pseudoscience. “You can’t tell me that breaking down the sound barrier wouldn’t accelerate…the….”

Silence.

This wasn’t entirely true. There was a car horn going off somewhere down the street from them. Someone laying into the horn in their frustration at what was likely a pedestrian in the crosswalk or someone cutting them off. Some mundane human thing that proved they weren’t the only two people in the world. But still, for their sake….

Silence.

“Shit.” Newton started pushing his sleeves back down.

“Newt.” Hermann didn’t say the word, more that it was punched out of him in a surprised puff of air. He wasn’t sure exactly when he had grabbed Newton’s hand. “When—”

And that right there was the catalyst. Newton yanked his arm free, standing up from the couch with the force of a man who intended to flip it over. He nearly swept his arms on the table to shove away all the data collected; pages and pages of handwritten notes, doodads to fiddle with, the tablet, the phone charger, a framed photograph of two young scientists come together outside the old Shatterdome and smiling with immense relief at having helped “stop the apocalypse.”

“Listen, before you start all your ‘when’ and ‘why’ crap, just, like. I mean it’s not even anything, alright, so why don’t you leave it alone, Hermann. Alright? You leave it alone!” Newton was shouting but it wasn’t the excitement of study and intense theoretical debate they were having earlier. It was desperation. Hermann stood up, reaching for him again. “Leave me alone, Hermann, I swear to god, man. I swear to god, I’ll—”

Hermann limped around the edge of the coffee table and grabbed Newton’s arm in a vice grip. His pale, slender fingers crisscrossed neatly the same way Newton’s did around his neck when they were trying to stop the drones in Liwen Shao’s lab. When, for a brief moment, Newton looked down at Hermann, who was gasping for air, and he cracked through. He admitted he was still in there, that he was trying, and he just wasn’t strong enough to stop them.

Now Hermann’s fingers returned the stifling gesture by covering over a particularly nasty looking burn. The skin was shiny and hot over the face of one of those tattooed caricatures Newton had brandished so proudly during his career.

Newton tried to pull away again. When that wasn’t immediately accomplished, he tried unrolling his sleeves, tried to cover them over Hermann’s knuckles.

“I swear to god,” he kept saying, laughing even. “I swear, just leave it alone. Hermann. Let go, man. Let go of me right now. You don’t—”

There were at least four that Hermann could see on Newton’s right arm, not counting the one that he was covering this moment with his palm. They carved like impromptu sharpies through the faces, not entirely ruining them, but doing the ink no favors, redacting the images in hurried strokes. He rubbed his thumb back and forth, tracing the raised and pitted scar tissue, his eyes trained to Newton’s arm.

“What,” Newton snapped. “I’m just…I’m just supposed to keep ‘em? Ten years, man. It was ten years and I knew something was up. Like…. I dunno, I tried to drown them out, I really did. You know, like, was it stress? New job? I was confused, alright? I tried.” And he got very quiet again, staring hard at the ground. “I really did.”

Hermann sank down to his knees, the last foot or so more of a stumbling crash. But it put him in Newton’s peripheral. He rubbed at the colorful, if faded lines of ink that he had come to admire and not quite envy but at the very least appreciate over the years.

“Herms, don’t. Your leg—”

Hermann kept a hold of Newton’s forearm. _Damn_ his leg but it hurt. Throbbed, like a turning corkscrew winding a short circuit up his hip and into his spine. He stayed there anyways and used his free hand to hold onto Newton’s waist. The tattoos covered nearly everything from the neck down to his hips, ending in a swirling pattern of stylized waves or cloud plumes. They marked every inch. Save Newton’s hands. They peaked a little at his wrists, but they didn’t go to his hands. That’s why it was so easy to cover with the sleeves. Hermann looked at Newton’s stomach, roughly where his bellybutton might be, and he pressed his forehead there.

“C’mon. Hermann.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Hermann said softly, muffled a little as his face was pointed down.

“What?

Hermann continued after he swallowed a bit of bile at the back of his throat. The linguini had done no favors for settling his stomach.

“I should have stayed. When you went to Tokyo, the least I could have done was follow. It happened so quickly, and you were so very proud of your work and I was…I suppose I was proud of mine. I thought we would make time and it was easier and easier to just…to pine. From afar.”

“Pine? Dude, stop.”

Newton yanked again and, this time, got his arm free. He was able to push his sleeve to his wrist again, which seemed to calm him down.

“You don’t gotta pretend you care _that much_ , man, alright?”

“Pretend?” Hermann’s eyebrows came together, pulling at his hairline which was still plastered to Newton’s stomach. “Pretend? Do you honestly think I’m pretending? Do I seem like the sort’ve man to pretend _anything_?”

That got a laugh out of Newton. It was small, but any victory was sweet.

“Alright, I’ll give you that.” He patted Hermann’s shoulder. “But, I’m serious, dude. Get up. That can’t be comfortable.”

“It isn’t,” Hermann said stubbornly and butted his forehead against Newton’s stomach. Newton, in kind, made a short “oof” sound and cupped Hermann’s head with both hands. “But I’m very annoyed, Newton. Very annoyed.”

“Well, you’re not allowed to be annoyed right now,” Newton said simply.

Hermann looked up. Newton’s hands were soft and warm on either side of his face. He was sickened to even think this, but Hermann had a flash of a moment where he saw Newton’s face stretching back in that grin, going too far. The terrible burns and cuts on his arms glowing a neon blue as his hands trembled and he squeezed down on Hermann’s head. That he became a vice that made the skull throb and shiver until it finally cracked. Easier than squeezing a watermelon. Terrible to think. Terrible more that he gasped so softly, his lips parting to make way. Terrible that Hermann missed it right until Newton kneeled between his legs and kissed him.

It was….

\---

_You can’t hide in the drift._

That was the belief of anyone who were either lucky or unlucky enough to participate in a neural drift. The other adage was not to go chasing the rabbit, but there were plenty of cases where that just happened. It happened. You went right down the hole and you fell out in Wonderland and you met Alice and she bit your throat open for you. Cadets could tell you the same thing. Trauma is a wound and when you have a guest over for supper, it’s impolite to bleed so obviously in front of them. But it still. Just. Happened.

The very first time was fun. Oh my god, it was amazing. It was painful and it was fast and it was so alien. The kaiju would be the first guess as to why it was alien, but it wasn’t even that. Yes, that was the goal, to infiltrate and figure out the plan, to open the floodgates that would pave way for the Precursors to come in and set up shop like the sneaky little bastards they were, but that wasn’t even it either. Dude, it was the _memories_. Seeing them. Tasting them. Smelling them. Living, breathing.

You so thought you were going to die. If Hermann hadn’t come….

If Hermann hadn’t joined….

The neural drift shoved two people through a whirlwind as they completed their handshake. “Handshake.” Ugh. One awkward fist patting your own, looking for space, agreeing to do the impossible with you. But, either way, it was a turbulent ride through every flash of memory that came up, the first triggered by the unsettling sensation of falling into one’s own head, and the meme that connected that sensation to the next, all while mixed in with your drift partner’s same wild ride. Throw in Kaiju memories from a dying secondary brain and that is a fucking trip. No way to beat around it.

There was nothing to hide then. The past just was and each of them read it plain as day. Living it together, entwining it together, swapping pieces of each other’s souls like trading cards in an alley. These are yours and these are mine and now we shuffle them into the same deck and become one.

And, oh god, oh _god_ , to become one.

It helps, of course, that the two of them had talked for years. Pen pals. Those were the happiest times. The philosophical discussions, the intricate theorems they developed, the kinship in mind they couldn’t find in anyone else who talked to them for more than thirty nanoseconds. It was beautiful. And, yes, the first time they actually met in person, it was hell. It was shattering, honestly. Honestly. It was like a spear went right into the heart and turned around a few times to really core out the poor shivering muscle that was once fluttering with so much excitement, you thought you were going to die.

You thought you were going to die.

You thought, maybe, one day, you two would become one again.

You thought, maybe, one day, you two.

Just.

Together, man.

And he would do that for you. He said, you know, he would do that with you.

With you.

And also, to hell with those Precursor bastards, remember them? Remember when they had him pinned down beneath you and you were, like, you were crying so hard? But you were crying so hard way, _way_ down that it was basically like you were drowning yourself and you could barely muster a tear or two as you begged him. God, you’d like to beg him again. You really would.

Together, man.

With you.

Also, holy shit, coming out of the drift is better than surfacing for air. It’s like….

\---

…and luckily, Newton didn’t laugh when Hermann stumbled, because the two barely broke apart right now to breathe, let alone look for the door jamb leading into the bedroom. One very long loafer clipped the little strip of wood, catching his toe so that he had to cling to Newton or risk falling hard to the floor, and that would break all their momentum.

“I gotcha, man, I gotcha,” Newton said, laughing as he gripped Hermann’s elbows tight. “You know how to walk at all or, like, is this—”

“Oh, do shut up, Newton,” Hermann growled. He grabbed a fistful of Newton’s shirt and dragged him towards the bed.


	2. We're Bad At This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermann is thinking about the laws of physics while Newton is getting physical. Nerds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so there's a hint of some of the things that Hermann did to help Newton recover from the Precursors and we're totally going to get into that. Totally. We're not distracted by these two trying to finally get together, right? Nooooo.
> 
> Also, Hermann's "experience" is just awkward fumblings through college at best. Nothing spectacular. He's been keeping to himself waiting for Newton, the hopeless romantic.

Momentum is a curious thing. The quantity of motion measured in a moving body, determined by product of both mass and velocity. Simple to calculate, harder to grasp. The impetus of their union had a desperate momentum then, but it lost speed when they hit the mattress with the back of Hermann’s leg. Newton’s first law of physics in action. A body in motion will remain in motion unless compelled to change its state of action by an outside force. Hermann and Newton gliding together. Hermann and Newton meet bed. The irony of the man who pioneered said laws of physics was not lost on Hermann as he gripped Newton’s shoulders, his lip curling up to the right in a scowl.

“Ouch,” he grumbled. His were eyes closed, the word escaping before he had a chance to catch it. Little butterfly sounds that found their way to the surface, despite his claims that he was far stronger than he appeared and that he rarely would allow anyone to favor him because of his injury.

 “You shouldn’t have kneeled for me, dude,” Newton whispered, easing Hermann down onto the mattress to sit.

“You shouldn’t have done that to yourself,” Hermann shot back petulantly. Butterfly words in action. Cruelty sparked out of him like pain sparked through him. He regretted it, of course, his face softening. “No, Newton, I’m sorry, I—”

“It’s okay.” Newton leaned down, cupping Hermann’s sharp jawline, and kissed him again.

Electricity. Merely the poetic metaphor of that infinitesimal jolt one receives through their lips and straight down their spine when one membrane of skin touches another, but it was the best metaphor Hermann had at his disposal. Newton was, as ever, electricity.

Newton brushed his thumb across Hermann’s neck, very briefly aligning the shadowy fingerprints of where he had choked Dr. Gottlieb back in Liwen Shao’s facility. His eyebrows twitched down, pupils pulled back to pinpricks despite the dark of Hermann’s bedroom. He did not squeeze, thank God, but he was remembering. Too much, perhaps. Hermann reached up quickly and grabbed Newton’s hand, sweeping his thumb back and forth across the skin.

“Newt,” he whispered.

Newton’s eyes focused again. The pupils returned. The scowl smoothed away from all but the tiny tense center between his eyebrows.

“Hey,” he answered back in kind. His hand shifted up, touching Hermann’s cheek. “Hey. Sorry.”

“You mustn’t apologize for that.”

“Oh, but I must.”

Newton was teasing him. He was trying. Damn him, but he was trying so hard. Hermann wanted to reward him for every measure he pulled himself to, every victory. He pushed forward to meet him, to kiss at his brow where he wanted to unknit that concern, that tension. He pulled Newton to his lap, slipping fingers up the backside of his many layers. Newton moaned in kind, more a strangled hum that got tangled up in his throat. A want with a conflicted edge.

Hermann stopped.

“What?” he whispered, looking him firmly in the eye. “What can I—”

“You’re okay. You’re okay, don’t... Don’t worry, man. You’re not.... Nothing’s wrong.”

“Are you—?”

“Dude, I promise.” Newton’s forehead met Hermann’s in earnest. “I promise.”

While they were distracted by intimate touches, Newton hooked his hands against Herman’s wrists and tugged them out from under his shirt only to bring them up to kiss his knuckles. And it was very sweet, of course, very kind of him. Hermann’s knobby joints were red and cracked from too long standing before chalkboards, too long stirring over a heated coil on the stove. They were not hardened by welding craft or much manual labor, but they were not soft, silky things of someone who took the time to lotion and care for them. It was so tender of Newton that he let it go how clearly Newton did not want the favor returned. Do not cross under the shirt. These were clear delineations and unspoken requests. Hermann nodded as Newton planted his lips on each knuckle, down the phalange to the tapered point of his index finger and slipped it between his teeth.

“I.” Hermann’s face dropped a few shades of pigment before it flared up bright red. He licked his lip, trying to find the right sequence of words now while that _tongue_ lapped up at his finger so delicately. “I don’t suppose you would be…amendable to good _Lord_ , Newton, please.”

Perhaps Hermann wasn’t allowed under to touch and stroke at Newton’s abdomen, but the other had decided to see how far his wandering hand could go. While he distracted Hermann with his mouth, he brushed up the cornflower button-down shirt, tugging it loose from his belt and exposing his stomach. Newton’s hands were slightly cold, and it made him gasp as his eyes fluttered shut again. This very simple, very benign reaction made Newton laugh, pulling off Hermann’s fingers.

“Stay with me, my man, I haven’t even done anything,” Newton said with a grin. He cupped the back of Hermann’s head, not letting him tip back on the mattress and escape. “You’re fidgeting.”

“I am not,” Hermann rebuked. He grabbed a fistful of his pantleg, the other on the mattress to keep the weight off his hip.

“Dude. Tell me you’ve done, like, _anything_ before?”

“I’ve done many things before this moment, yes. You’ll have to be a touch more specific than _that_ , Newton.”

“You know what I mean,” Newton answered, tilting his head.

And Hermann sighed, closing his eyes again. Back to the comfortable safety of the dark, where he could be flustered all he wanted without adding to it by seeing Newton’s smug little beautiful bastard face. “Yes. I know what you mean.”

“…and?”

Hermann made a tight, straight line with his mouth, nodding ever so slightly.

“’Yes’ you hear me or ‘yes’ you’ve—”

“You’ve been in my head before,” Hermann answered with a scowl. “I don’t need to relive—”

“Alright. Dude. Alright.” Before Hermann pulled away completely, Newton sat up again, still cupping the back of his head. Momentum not entirely lost, but entropy getting the better of their potential romantic tryst. “You’re right. Don’t gotta relive that. We’re here now, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” Hermann hissed out reluctantly.

“We’ve got the shades drawn so we can only guess that they’ve got, like, our heat signatures or something over with those jerks from the PPDC, right?”

Hermann flicked his eyes towards the window, a stringent grey curtain lowered so that only a sliver of the streetlamp light made it across the windowsill. He didn’t want to think of Lambert’s men stationed across the alley from them, checking screens for two red and orange figures sitting and kneeling by his bed. But it added a layer of truth to the moment. Kept them clearly in the now. He nodded his head again, more fervently than before.

“We’ve got…what is this? This a queen?” Newton pushed down on the bedding, letting it spring back up to meet his hand. “You got this cause you had the space now, didn’t you? Those cots back at the Shatterdome were—”

“Nightmarishly cramped. My leg—”

“Oh, dude, you’re leg. I remember, you would come in—”

“I tried to get in before you so—”

“—and you were _yelling_? Oh my god, that one time—”

“—don’t say the Bunsen burner inc—”

“—it was totally not my fault, though.”

“Yes it was! I told you a hundred times if I told you once. _Not_ on my side of—”

“—and the smell didn’t leave for like—”

“I said not to mention it!”

“I can’t help it! It smelled exactly like—”

“Don’t. Newton. Newton!”

“Like five-day egg drop soup with cat litter. Hint of rosemary, oddly.”

“Oddly, yes.

“Dude. It was....”

“Disgusting.”

“ _Astonishingly_ disgusting, dude.”

Hermann wrinkled his nose, almost certain the two of them recalled the same pungent smell of burning kaiju flesh, that first foyer into the volatile components that would make up the fuel for the new jaegers, the catalyst for the Precursor’s attempt to wipe out humanity. His scowl only softened when he saw Newton laughing. Genuinely laughing. Newton sat back on his knees, a foot shorter now on the floor. He held his stomach and laughed, tipping back until Hermann caught his arm to keep him upright.

“We’re bad at this,” Newton answered at last, clinging to Hermann’s arm.

“Yes.” Hermann chuckled in kind, glad to hold onto Newton’s arm. He flicked his head towards the window. “I imagine they’re having a fun show over there.”

“I mean, right where I’m at?” Newton wiggled closer between Hermann’s legs, tucking his own beneath the frame of the bed. “Bet they have the wrong idea of what’s happening.”

“What _is_ happening?” Hermann asked, not unkindly of course, but amused.

He brushed back some of Newton’s persistently fluffy hair and got a shrug for an answer. So, Hermann took his chance and ran his hand down the side of Newton’s face, his jaw, and to the high collar of one of his under shirts. Newton’s face was smooth, adoring, complacent. He stretched his neck to give Hermann more room, right until his fingers touched the first line of ink on his collarbone. He snapped his hand up again to meet Hermann’s wrist.

“What’s happening?” Hermann asked more earnestly without shifting his weight. Just his voice. Letting concern shine through most of all.

Newton sighed and dropped his head against Hermann’s chest. Hermann, in kind, brushed his arm over Newton’s back, a soothing gesture that was adamantly _above_ his clothes.

“I want you to know that you can talk to me, Newton. We have been inside each other’s—”

“Heads. Yeah. I know,” Newton mumbled, relaxing more as Hermann gently rubbed his back. “I know. And it should be easier. I mean, with you of all people. You saw a glimpse of what…you know. What the hivemind was like.”

“I know,” Hermann said softly.

“And you were the only one stupid enough to try and build another Pons from scrap and connect—”

“Second.”

“What?” Newton lifted his head to look up at Hermann, who rested his hand on Newton’s shoulder in kind.

“I was the second person stupid enough to try and build a unit out of garbage. You were the idiot who inspired me.”

“Yeah.” Newton’s face curled up into a smile again. “I’m your idiot, though?”

Hermann pulled Newton close to him again, sharing a meniscus of air between them. “I would hope that the answer was obvious,” he answered slyly. Shyly. Wanting. He recalled the flash of too many eyes blinking across Newton’s face, the terrible jaw splitting his skull open, the hands of the Precursors clamped down on Newton’s frail body in the Drift. And he smiled anyways, seeing Newton here. Now. Real. “It was hardly any fun this time slipping into your head to rescue you, but I would do it again.”

Newton finished the bridge between them, moaning back as he kissed him. Less of the strangled sound of regret. Hermann threaded his hand through Newton’s hair, pulling him, enveloping him. This man, by God, this man was his. And this man, by God, he….

Hermann gulped when he felt something tug away at his waistband. The belt loop was undone with a fumbling pull and jerk. He didn’t want to disconnect, and it seemed that every time he pulled back, just a little, Newton found enough reach to meet him. His heart fluttered immediately to the back of his throat as he tightened his fist in Newton’s hair. Partially to stall him, more because by _God_ he wanted this.

There was a little taste as Newton pushed his tongue through to Hermann, who let his mouth go slack. He felt most of him was melting at Newton’s touches, while he stiffened considerably when Newton snaked his hand into his trousers. Hermann moaned his “please” against Newton, who giggled back as he pulled Hermann out completely.

“I love you, dude,” Newton said irreverently, kissing hard again before pulling away.

Hermann tipped forward, drawn in by the momentum of the kiss. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. He tipped forward after Newton because there is always a pair of forces acting on the two interacting objects. Newton’s lips. Hermann’s body. The size of the force on the first object equals the size of the force on the second object. Such a simple equation. Such a ludicrously unequal outcome as Newton lowered himself and wrapped his mouth around Hermann’s prick like a warm glove.

Hermann tried to stay quiet. He was under the impression that it was inappropriate to make any noise to signify his pleasure, that it was undignified to share a response. Or that the shame drilled into him by a conservative upbringing simply bolted his chest up tight and glued his mouth shut. He swallowed hard, working a lump out of his throat. Shaky fingers met Newton’s hairline again, ghosting above his head while he worked up and down Hermann’s shaft. His _tongue_. Oh, but a man could find the time to work in some poetry about that. Herman bit back a smile as he focused on Newton between his legs. The curve of his back. The careful whorl of his hair across the back of his skull. The little peekaboo patches of ink on his skin that showed off when he dipped his head down low and swallowed up Hermann from head to root.

”Please,” Hermann hissed quietly, barely above a whisper. Please what? He wasn’t entirely certain himself. He wanted to relax in the moment, the tight thrill building up in his guts, but he was afraid to embarrass himself as much as he was afraid to disgust Newton. Did he taste bad? Was he too small? Was he fragile? Was he uncomfortable? Was he somehow forcing Newton to do this in return for the favor of risking his life to bring Newton back?

Another expertly done ripple of Newton’s tongue squeezed a little moan out of Hermann. It was like opening a faucet. It was the encouragement that Newton was looking for as he moved faster, hallowing out his cheeks to create a tighter seal on Hermann. More moans were eked out of him now and he finally let his hand rest on Newton’s head, gently petting down his hair.

Hermann made a fist in Newton’s locks before he came, trying to pull him off as a courtesy. And, in kind, Newton seemed more determined to suck him off until he was through, humming through the little after shocks to tease and torment Hermann like he had never been teased before. His breath was ragged when Newton pulled off, a final flick of his tongue over the head as if to clean him off. It was obscene. It was beautiful. It made him twitch again for want, even if he was completely spent.

“Here. Oh, do come here,” Hermann begged, holding onto Newton’s neck and trying to find the strength to pull him up to him. Newton only laughed, wiping at the corners of his mouth.

“You’re, like, seriously the quietest person I’ve known. And _now_ you wanna start opening your mouth?”

“Shut up,” Hermann said with a faux growl.

Newton laughed harder as he crawled up to meet him, straddling Hermann carefully on the bed. Hermann quickly put himself away, trying to zip his pants back up with one hand. It was a clumsy attempt, shaky fingers and all, and Newton just grabbed his wrists again to kiss them. Hermann looked up to meet his eyes, watching. Waiting. He looked down and pulled his hand free, inching for Newton’s belt.

“Oh, no man.” Newton took a hold of Hermann’s hand, interlocking their fingers. “I’m not asking you to return the favor.”

“Why?” Hermann croaked. It was his turn to tilt his head. “Surely I can—”

“I’m almost certain you can.” Newton rolled off Hermann’s hips, taking special care of his bad leg as he positioned himself behind and pulled him further up the mattress. “Not tonight.”

“Is it something I—”

“Nope,” Newton answered cheerfully. “You were perfect.” Hermann must have made a face that showed through even in the dimly lit room. Newton chuckled, wrapping his arms around Hermann as they tipped over onto the pillows. “I promise you were.”

That only made him hum his disapproval. He didn’t want to argue. Truth be told, he would much rather sleep, which felt like a terrible cliché. But it was getting late and they had had a busy time just getting home. Here. Hermann fought a yawn until Newton nuzzled his nose into the crook of his neck, wrapping his arms around Hermann’s chest and fitting a knee between Hermann’s legs. It was absurdly comfortable, actually.

“I feel….” Oh, he yawned again, damn him. Damn him. “I feel like I’ve used you. Somehow.”

“Furthest from the truth, my man.”

“You’re…certain?”

Newton yawned after him now, planting a sleepy kiss at the back of Hermann’s neck, right near the nape. “I’m so certain.” He sighed, and Hermann could almost swear that Newton had started to drift off to sleep, dozing lightly as his breath brushed against his shaved hairline. Hermann closed his eyes too, breathing deeply. He couldn’t help himself if he fell asleep like this, feeling warm. Feeling loved. Feeling a tiny nagging at the back of his mind that tomorrow, yes. Tomorrow they would discuss this.

\---

God, let Hermann forget all that stupid shit tomorrow. Not…not the blow job. Please don’t forget that. Just everything else. Just….

Newton forced himself to breathe, breathe, breathe like he was sleeping. It was an easy trick and he would love for everyone to pretend he learned it himself and not from watching Them play puppet with his meat sack. He held onto Hermann, feeling him slip away to dream his absurdly rich, colorful, _insane_ dreams that went way back to the back of his subconscious before he woke up. Almost forgotten. Hermann’s mind was…something. And Newton did not want to admit he wanted another chance at it. He wanted to slip into Hermann’s mind and let him run with it. Let him roll over Newton like a steamroller. Let him push and pull and break him apart. Let him be everything and Newton could disappear in there. He wanted the familiar pressure of the Pons on his skull, everything else just gone, man. Gone. The resurfacing. God, it was like an itch under his scalp. Deeper than that.

But, no. No, don’t fuck this up too. Newton’s chest was tight, but he didn’t squirm or anything as he held onto Hermann. His tether. His lifeline.

_Just, please, dude, forget you saw anything on my arms tomorrow. For me? Let it go? Please?_

Newton wasn’t always a praying man, but as he squeezed his arms across Hermann’s chest, he decided he could give that a try.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boom, baby! Anyways, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed trying to write it for you!


	3. Eventually

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Newton is really trying to make breakfast and, uh, failing hard. You can't blame him completely. He's not exactly at his best right now. 
> 
> We've got eggs, coffee, kisses, cuddles, and regret. Also, a handsome stranger shows up at the end?

Hermann, for the better portion of his life, had kept an alarm that woke him up well before the sun did. Not that life in the Shatterdome had windows to speak of in their tiny reinforced cabins and therefore no basis to determine he did wake before the sun. He could have gone through the trouble of programming a full spectrum light source to “warm up” as he woke, but the man didn’t go for frippery. He was the sort to tinker with his tech until an uncomfortable hour forced him to pass out, only to wake up a few short hours later and do it all over again—it should be noted in the footnotes of Dr. Hermann Gottlieb’s sordid life that the only reason he didn’t develop osteomalacia from spending months trapped indoors was a vitamin supplement and Tendo, who had had the idea of putting in the lights in the mess hall “for all their damn sake.” Life was not efficient. It was not easy. It did not bend to give up gifts so easily. It was seized by desperate hands and wrestled out of the constant slip-stream of time. And it was occasionally unwittingly illuminated overhead with a sun light.

Even now, when he had a looser schedule to attend to, his body seized up from sleep at a deplorably early hour. Though, a reminder to himself that he had gone to bed “early” last night. Worn down from moving, tending to Newton, and being tended to _by_ Newton. The memory made him twitch a smile before he fully resurfaced. He woke like he was breathing ice water; suddenly and succinctly.

There were a few languishing stretches. An arm tucked up to his neck, toes splaying out under the sheets, his back arcing off the mattress as he warmed up muscles that were neither impressive nor particularly functional, at least as much as most men might dream them to be. He scratched at his stomach and turned to see the pillow indented beside him. Hermann patted the mold of Newton’s head, blinking back the grainy sleep from his eyes.

“Newt?”

No answer.

Hermann swung his legs out over the edge of the bed and patted blindly for his cane, which he usually propped up against his nightstand. His face soured as he realized he couldn’t find the handle and actually _looked_ now to see it wasn’t in its usual spot. Bad start going to worse, it seemed. He was particularly stiff in the morning and prone to a spasm that pinged signals off his spine. He was not happy at the prospect of limping all the way back to the living space to retrieve his cane where he had likely left it by the sofa. “Forgotten” it was more accurate, after the kiss. Sweet. Surprising. Distracting. And, of course, now the slightly musty film of yesterday’s sweat clung to his wrinkled clothes. His mouth tasted filmy. His groin needed to be scrubbed. His knee was throbbing. Hermann ticked off every negative he could think of as a means to distract from the prowling fear that he had somehow lost Newton during the night.

 “Up, you bastard,” he said to his knees. “Come on.”

Up the bastard went.

Hermann limped with all the delicate grace of a hobbled orangutan. He grit his teeth, leaning heavily on the wall once he crossed his bedroom to meet it. It was simple. It was _walking_ for God’s sake, not trying for first place in a triathlon. It was easily a four-foot gap from his bed to the doorway that lead out to the kitchen and yet it was forging the Nile river at this point. Hermann cursed himself and swung the door open, hit with a waft of almost-not-quite-burnt eggs, maybe-toasted-bread, and coffee. No. Wait. The eggs were certainly burnt now.

“Whoa, hey there, early bird.”

Newton was flapping one of the dish towels over the stove, frantically beating back the plume of smoke. Hermann leaned heavily against the doorframe, gripping onto the jamb by his head. He watched the smoke, glaring blearily as it trailed away from Newton towards the finnicky smoke alarm.

“Newton, the—”

And, sure enough, a short, piercing note shot through the small flat. Hermann closed his eyes.

“Whoa, sorry! Sorry! Hold on, buddy. Let me get that. Jesus, this thing does not ventilate for _shit_ , does it?” Newton was laughing while desperately beating the smoke away from the alarm. “You need a new hood over that.”

“Open the window,” Hermann grumbled, massaging his eye sockets.

“What?”

“Open. The _window_.”

Newton kept flapping, glancing at the window that opened to the alleyway while the alarm overhead beeped aggressively at them. It was too high up for them to simply poke the off-switch. Never underestimate that vaulted ceilings, while a luxury, can also be a terrible nightmare. He was doing some calculation in his head, more than likely, trying to decide how long it would take to open the window versus how long it would take to simply clear the smoke away that was tripping the alarm. It should not have been that difficult. Hermann glanced up only to see black coming from the smoke.

“Newton! You didn’t turn off—”

“I got it!”

Newton turned as Hermann shoved away from the wall, quickly crossing the living space and trying to get around the little island.

“I got it I got it! I got it!” Newton dropped the towel, shoving open the window as Hermann’s leg simply gave out from the effort and he tripped down towards the island. “I got—dude!”

Hermann missed banging his head against the island counter by some small miracle. His crash only sounded worse because he took a stool down with him, clattering across the hardwood floor. Newton was on him in a flash, gripping his shoulders while the eggs died in a violent emulsion, leaving no survivors in the skillet. Oh, his poor skillet.

“The _stove_ ,” Hermann hissed on the ground, pushing Newton away while he tried to regain his composure.

“Right. Right, right, I got it. I got it, Herm.”

Newton released Hermann mid-grab, leaving him to fall back to the floor with an undignified grunt as he twisted the valves on the stove, shutting it off and tossing the offending skillet straight into the sink. Water boiled and steamed on the surface as he ran the faucet before that sizzled down to nothing. The alarm chirped for another minute before it silenced it’s bickering and Newton was back on Hermann again, trying to help him sit up.

 “I’m so sorry, dude. I’m sorry. Let me help.”

“You’ve done quite a bit of help this morning already,” Hermann answered, sitting up on his own. He held onto Newton’s hand before he could grab him and hoist him up. Hermann’s eyes were closed, and he tried to shove away all the unwanted sensations. His downstairs neighbors must _love_ him this morning. “What were you doing?”

“Breakfast,” Newton answered with a laugh. “Obviously.”

“Obviously not. I would have guessed you were trying to burn down our home.” Hermann scowled, squeezing Newton’s hand in a crescendo wave of his fingers as he found the strength to get up. Newton helped, of course, gripping his elbow, but he thought he had done most of the work. When he looked, Newton was smiling. “What?”

“Nothing, man,” Newton answered, batting the question away.

“No. _What_?”

“No, you just…’our’ home,” Newton said quietly, conspiratorially. He bobbed his head with the words.

“Yes?”

“No, it’s just….” Newton shrugged, and Hermann kept massaging Newton’s hand. Less a nervous habit and more a compulsory tick. Before Hermann could press him, Newton finished with, “I like it. I like it. I love it.”

Hermann wasn’t quite in the mood to show his adoration yet—please, _please_ say the coffee isn’t burned too? But he forced up a grin in return, because he did care very much that Newton would finish his statements, admitting that he did indeed enjoy that he was here, that this was a home and beyond that that it was _their_ home, despite the fact that it did not compare to the place he lived in before. For either of them, really. One watching up in his glass tower over a world that did not know the impending doom he was unwittingly scheming, the other trapped in his metal box in a rig that was limping along on its best efforts to try and save the world again.

They stood there a moment, looking at each other, lost in their own interpretations of commitment before Hermann cleared his throat. “I believe I heard the percolator?”

“Oh, dude! Totally!” Newton let go first, which was oddly a shame, as he went to get the coffee. “I was gonna put the kettle on too, because I figured tea—”

“Absolutely, but it’s _early_. I know, I know. Indulge me. I would just rather have the coffee now, please. We can forget the eggs.”

“Toast isn’t burned.” Newton flicked two pieces of barely-golden bread onto a plate. It wasn’t even warm to the touch, even though it had clearly just popped up from the toaster. “So…I will totally go get us some breakfast, if you want.”

“Coffee first,” Hermann grumbled.

He took the mug after Newton had prepared it—milk, sugar, a spoon to stir it—and moaned into the screen of steam with a healthy growl: “Yes, please,” as he held it up to his face. It wasn’t a fancy blend by any stretch and anybody who participated in caffeinated snobbery would scoff, but he drank it with a happy grin.

“See, now, why couldn’t you sound like that last night?” Newton asked with a sly smirk over the lip of his own mug, casually raising it to cheer him before he sipped. Hermann hid his face behind his mug and Newton softened instantly. “No, I’m joking. I’m joking, I promise.” When that didn’t seem to draw Hermann back out from his shell, he walked over and touched his hand, looking up at him earnestly. “Dude, I’m a jerk. Don’t take what I say to heart, man, I’m super tired and I—”

It was Hermann’s turn to close the gap. The least he could do, though it showed a little courage. He hoped it showed a little courage. He was still reeling from the proper etiquette— _do we kiss? Do we not kiss? Do I ask from now on? Do I have to sign something? Does he? Should we draft up a contract with rules and regulations? Is it something official? Is it a mistake?_ But his mind soothed when Newton’s mouth fit perfectly against his own and they both seemed to bleed out the tension until there was nothing but quiet and softness.

And it was Hermann’s turn to break away first. He lingered. They both did. But his eyes snapped open the same way they did when he woke up in the morning. He looked down at Newton to gauge the success of his gambit.

“Hey,” Newton said, his eye still shut as he slid a hand up Hermann’s shirt. “So. Do that again.”

Hermann laughed. He was surprised by the sound, by the ease of it. The bread wasn’t toasted. The eggs were ash. The coffee was tolerable. And they sustained each other anyways, letting the morning slip by with too many tender touches to make up for all the lost years. By the time the sun was up, Hermann had his cane and he had already made a replacement meal for the two of them, which they shared on the couch.

Newton was doing a better job of eating this morning. He scraped up the egg scramble, nearly going so far as to lick the plate clean. Hermann watched him, studied him, loved him from his side of the couch with a lazy tilt of his head. This was a good sight to see. Newton had been thinner, leaner when Hermann saw him at Liwen Shao’s facility, and practically gaunt and ghostlike in the chair at the PPDC. It was all hidden, of course. Layers helped to keep Newton insulated as well as protect some part of him that didn’t like the world getting in too close. But his color had returned, and he appeared to be eating far better now. Linguini last night. Eggs this morning. It was bloody success. Hermann felt himself swell with the idea that it was his own cooking that aided the process. But there was still work to be done. Steps to be taken. Hermann touched his tongue to the back of his teeth as he wondered how best to approach this.

“Newton.”

“Mm?” he asked, raised eyebrows lifting even higher over the edge of his plate. He literally was now just licking it clean. Hermann scowled and patted the cushion next to him, reeling Newton to him. A fisherman with a taught line could not so easily draw someone in as Hermann drew Newton in then. Newton flopped down beside him, using Hermann’s thigh as a pillow.

“I can make you more, you know,” Hermann said sternly even as he stroked Newton’s hair back from his forehead.

“Totally,” Newton answered, but let the plate rest on his chest. He closed his eyes, humming softly while Hermann pet him. “But first? Don’t stop doing that, like, forever.”

Hermann chuckled, carding his fingers through Newton’s hair as requested. He changed directions to keep the sensation new, to keep Newton present but relaxed.

“Newton, I was hoping we could discuss a few things,” Hermann started again, watching his face change from smooth and relaxed to that tension again between his eyebrows. “You don’t have to tell me now. There’s no obligation here. If you don’t want to, of course, but, eventually. Eventually, I think we should.”

“Eventually,” Newton answered back with a little whine, still holding the plate.

“Eventually,” Hermann repeated, brushing his thumb across Newton’s eyebrows until he finally relaxed them too. Then his hand went flat against Newton’s cheek, brushing up and down his chin. “Eventually, they are going to ask you about what happened. And what you know about the Precursors’ next move.”

Newton’s breathing hitched and there was a slight snarl in his lip before he did the same as he did before. Smoothing out his features. Relaxing against Hermann’s touch. He wouldn’t open his eyes, not yet. The way they flickered back and forth beneath his lids, one could almost assume he was in REM.

“Newton?”

“Eventually, Hermann. I don’t…I don’t think I’m ready yet, okay?” He pushed his chin into Hermann’s hand, seeking warmth there. “Is that alright?”

“More than,” Hermann answered gently, brushing his thumb across his jawline again. “You finished Dr. Sambre’s lesson yesterday, right?” A nod as an answer. “Excellent. We should go in to see her this week.” Another nod, shorter, less enthusiastic, but still an agreement. “And we can talk about these perhaps?”

Hermann touched the collar on Newton’s neck, pulling it back enough to see some of the tattoo there. Newton opened his eyes, the pupils just tiny little dots in the vibrant blue. His breathing was so shallow as he clutched Hermann’s wrist. Panic. Undiluted, raw. His finger pads were white from digging in. Hermann didn’t move. Didn’t grimace. He waited until Newton’s eyes focused, slowly letting go of the fabric.

“Eventually,” he said gently, smiling down at Newton. He patted his chest, ignoring Newton’s tight hold on his arm. No reaction. No nod. No shake of his head either. Hermann lifted his palm. “Eventually. I hope.”

After a time, Newton finally let go and rolled up from the couch. He left Hermann there, taking the plates with him. Perhaps it had been a little too much, so Hermann only watched him go without calling after him. He sighed, resting his chin on his hand as he looked down at the cluttered table. The tablet was there, charged from last night. He thought about opening it to read it, but his chest was already heavy with the regret of pushing too quickly.

“I think I might go take a shower,” Hermann announced, staring at the tablet all the same. When there was no answer, he twisted about to look back at the kitchen. “If that’s alright?”

Newton was at the sink, scrubbing the burnt eggs in the pan. He could go at it all morning if he wanted. The skillet itself was likely ruined. Hermann watched him for a moment, how focused he was on the work, how his brow crinkled and all that tension he was carrying with him was driven out through his hands. He didn’t look upset so much as determined. Hermann chewed his tongue as he watched and decided this was good. It was the best he could get right now.

“I’ll leave you out a towel for when you want one as well.”

Some hormonal schoolboy within him wanted Newton to offer to join him in the shower, but Hermann had ignored that impulsive voice most of his life, and quickly squashed down that hope like a gnat under his thumbnail. He grabbed his cane and started for his bedroom again. He….

\---

…a mistake to come here. Absolutely. You’re compromised, dude, you can’t. Just. You’re going to hurt him. You’re going to hurt him and then what’re you going to do, huh? Think you can try a little harder this time? A little deeper, dude, it’s not that difficult. But, damnit, you slip, you sleep, and, like, of course they want to know. They want to know. Telephone game across universes, dude, like.

It was a mistake to come here. Absolutely.

You want to dream again. You just.

You can’t do eventually. You’re not ready, and he keeps asking like it’s gonna happen. But if it starts, does either of them know where to turn it off again? Well, maybe he does. He did it once before. He found you, dude, he found you and he…

But that was, like, that was a mistake. It was an accident at best. And they had you dressed up, dude, like, you were. So fucking stupid, honestly. Oh yeah, little Newt thinkin’ how cool it would be to actually get up close and personal with a kaiju. Wouldn’t it be neat to raise one? Wouldn’t it be neat to _be_ one? Dreams fucking suck, that’s what.

You want to dream again.

It was a mistake to come here, honestly. Honestly. Honestly, if he asks, if he keeps asking, but holy shit, dude, like, he loves you? Like, you can feel it? Like, you want to believe it so badly? You want to surrender, but, like, who’s gonna be holding that leash, my man, huh? Who’s really in charge? Who’s holding the keys to your Ferrari, dude, you.

Want to dream again.

Hermann had, like, the best dreams. They were beautiful. Alice was beautiful too, in the beginning. You didn’t even know what you were doing. You don’t know what you’re doing now, either. And it hurt. It hurts. Your hands hurt because you’re running them under hot fucking water you idiot, come on. Head on. Head on. Apply directly to the…where the fuck did that come from?

You know?

Eventually? Oh, man, it’s gonna fucking kill him.

\---

…stepped out of the shower, holding onto the rail glued to the side so he didn’t slip. It was stupid to have a tub. He never liked soaking in them, despite everyone arguing that it would feel a whole lot better on his leg. Which he refused to look at even now as he got out and reached for the towel.

After he was dried off and his hair neatly parted—bloody good luck on that staying just so throughout the rest of the day—he went back into the living space and was relieved to see Newton sitting at the kitchen island reading a book. He looked lost in the fantasy of whatever literature had gripped him, one shirt-sleeve-concealed fist tucked up under his chin while he leaned heavily on his opposite elbow and flicked through the pages. Hermann smiled, enjoying the view a moment. It was quiet and content and he thought they both needed this. But he didn’t want to be caught leering in the background, so he cleared his throat as he walked out of the bedroom. Newton stirred slightly, looking up with a distracted smile.

“Hey. Good shower?”

“Yes. Quite,” Hermann answered. He went to the sofa and snapped up his tablet, unlocking it. He was going to scroll through and just check on Newton’s report. Cursory look, that’s all. Nothing serious. Nothing too demanding. But that nagging sensation wouldn’t leave the back of his head and he needed _some_ answers, of course. “I left a towel out on the ledge for whenever you want to take one as well.”

“Thanks, man,” Newton answered, already going back to the book. It looked like one of Vonnegut’s novels. “I’ll…I’ll get to it in a sec.”

“No rush,” Hermann offered weakly. Kindly, not weakly. Kindly, of course. He had up Newton’s lesson plan for Dr. Sambre and clicked open the first text box, beginning to read: _More than anything, I would like to point out that to go into Drift like this, by far, is as_ —

A message popped up over everything. His texts had been sent through to his tablet in the event he wasn’t looking at his phone. Jake Pentecost was reaching out to him. Hermann blinked, pulled away from Newton’s notes. He tapped open the message:

_Yea alright. Open up._

Hermann blinked again, looking up just as there was a knock on the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I fell down the Newmann hole HARD. This is possibly the fastest I've worked on a fic and I am loving it! I hope you are too. I appreciate the hell out of all of you who come to read. You're aces, friends.


	4. No Promises, Dude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake has a secret mission for the two scientists in that he wants to get them out of the apartment. Why? Who's to say! Jake doesn't like to be called Ranger, Newton doesn't like to be called geezer, and Hermann just hates interruptions to his imaginary routine, period. So nobody is happy, really.

There’s a brief moment of _should you, should I?_ between Hermann and Newton as they look at each other and the door. It’s Hermann’s flat, officially—there’s together unofficially…officially, by decree of house arrest and by decree of mutual want—but Newton is closer to the door. Manners overlap and they both move to answer. Newton noticeably hangs back as Hermann grabs the door handle and opens it.

“I have a mission for ya.”

Jake Pentecost greets them with a smile, a flash of bright teeth framed by meticulously manicured stubble. The man has dressed himself up for this occasion in exactly the shabbiest street clothes Hermann could possibly imagine. And he would be dead wrong about them being the worst in Jake’s closet.

Hermann closed the door instantly.

“Oi, mate. Wait, ya didn’ even—”

The door is shut. Firmly. Resolutely. Hermann waits a moment, composing himself. He glances over his shoulder at Newton, who has gone up on his tip-toes to view over Hermann’s shoulder. He offers a shrug as advice. Hermann sets his jaw, thumps his cane once on the floor, and tries again. He doesn’t twitch or jump when he feels Newton’s hand slip up along the back of his shirt, closing the gap between them.

“Alright, sorry. Shoulda started with pleasantries and all that. You’re old school. It’s fine.” Jake was rambling quickly when Hermann opened up a second time. He laid a palm flat on the door to keep it from shutting in his face again. A bold move. Smart, but presumptuous. Hermann tightened his grip on his cane and tried to ignore the heavily armored man leaning in the hallway a couple of feet behind Jake. “You wanna hear me out?”

“Remind me again if I have a choice in that matter,” Hermann grumbled, flicking his eyes pointedly between the guard and Jake’s face.

“Yeah, man, free country and all.” Jake winked an eye shut, looking around them in thought. “I…think. Now, about that _mission_.”

“Yes, the last one you sent me off on—”

“Basically tipped us all off and saved our lives. Sort’ve. Least we found him.” Jake gestured over Hermann’s shoulder and he could feel Newton shrinking behind him again. “You were chuffed, mate, don’t even start. You think I didn’t clock that lil’ spark in yer eye an’ all? Electric.” Jake tapped his knuckle on the door and stepped in. Hermann and Newton stepped back in unison, making space for him. “Alright, lovebirds, we got a few things to discuss ‘fore we get to the fun and yer gonna love it were me who came and not my better halves, alright? You know why I came?”

“No,” Hermann answered, a little flustered as Jake passed.

“Interesting footage. Come on. Step lively. Where’s your…there we are. This place is a _mess_ , Gottlieb, I’m dead serious. You live like this? Why’d I think it’d be catalogued wires and measuring tape everywhere?”

“Herms,” Newton whispered from behind. Hermann put his fist against his lower back for Newton to grab a hold of, which he did instantly.

“Yes, well, pardon the mess then,” Hermann answered, threading his fingers with Newton’s in a firm grip. “Can I help you with that, or are you going to break it. Because we have a firm policy in this home where we don’t throw the tablets out the window.”

“Nah,” Jake answered with a laugh. He thumbed it, likely squinting at the lock. “But good on ya calling it a home though. Nesting?”

“Tolerating,” Hermann answered as he led them further into the flat, drawing closer to the couch. His cane handle leaned against his hip to free up a hand, which he held out to take the tablet back. “May I assist, Ranger Pentecost?”

Jake simply set it back onto the coffee table. Gently, which was a surprise that Hermann couldn’t place. He flittered away almost instantly, heading towards the refrigerator. It seemed he was quite adept at making himself at home. Or at the very least putting up the appearance.

“You boys wanna get outta here?”

“I was under the impression we were allowed to leave whenever we liked,” Hermann said, which was not entirely true. But Newton was being unaccustomedly quiet and so he had to carry on the rest of the conversation. His thumb worked back and forth across Newton’s knuckles, firmly anchored to the small of his back.

Jake simply leaned his torso out of the refrigerator, sharing a look that said _Don’t be daft_. _We both know that ain’t true._ He nibbled up a piece of the Havarti he’d found.

“Can you just, for one bloody moment, stop everything you’re doing and just…explain?” Hermann demanded, thumping his cane down again. He pulled Newton with him towards the kitchen, but Newton pulled back, the briefest game of tug o’ war. It was better to stay where they were. “Why are you here?”

“To see your bright and shiny faces,” Jake answered, tearing into a bit of sausage he’d claimed for himself as he finally, _finally_ shut the refrigerator door. “That, _and_ , we need to know what the next steps are. I saw the reports. Dr. Sambre’s more specifically. I know you got a shadow in there. Memories at least. We need to know.” Jake stared hard at Newton now. “You gotta give us something. I trust Dr. Gottlieb, which is half the reason you’re here and you ain’t locked up down in our basement.”

“If you think you can just—”

“Pump the brakes, slip.” Jake put a small spread of cheese and meats on a plate. All he was missing were crackers from the pantry beside him. “I ain’t comin’ here to ruffle feathers. That’s a load, course I was gonna do that, but the facts are these. We know they can still open that breach of theirs again. We know they have our number. And we know your boyfriend there was playing operator with them for a very long time.”

Hermann seethed visibly but said nothing, choosing not to dignify Jake’s accusations with a response.

“We didn’t get a chance to formerly meet before, by the by. Jake.”

Jake held out his hand from all the way in the kitchen, as though he expected Newton to come over and shake it. As though they were all being very pleasant and civil, which they were, but it was under the veil of a threat with the guards stationed outside. Newton’s fate had always been precarious, of course, even after they were so adamant he was free of the Precursors. Which, they _were_ adamant about that. There had been extensive tests done to get the clearance for Newton to be allowed out of the PPDC compound. As far as concrete evidence could go, the overlapping brain signatures on his neural graft had diminished to the familiar thread that was, undoubtedly, Dr. Newton Geiszler. Hermann had lied to himself if he thought, even for a moment, that things would be quiet and settled for them. There was no time. But he had hoped he could get a bit more solace with just the two of them to get Newton’s head sorted before this started up.

“Anyways, I heard an earful about you from Mako.”

There was a slight chill in the kitchen then, hanging between them like frost on a puff of wind. Newton clenched Hermann’s hand so tightly that his nails damn near cut into his palm. He didn’t wince, merely clenched his jaw tighter. Jake didn’t change his stance either. They were all putting up appearances as far as Hermann could tell. Jake just folded up a slice of cheese and piled it onto some pastrami before tucking into it.

“’pparently…mm… _apparently_ , you two were buddy-buddy back at the Shatterdome. ‘Specially leadin’ up to that wave outside Sydney. I got a few stories from her, actually. Can’t believe I’d owe her twenty for what you two got up to. Relax, Gottlieb. It’s only infrared and I deleted the footage myself. I swear. Man, you two, though. Good for you, but, ya know? Weird. Dragged it on, didn’ ya? Mako knew. Talk talk talk talk talk that one, when ya got her to open up. Sometimes, I think she really idolized you two. The whole K-Science division. Yeah, but she was right under Dad’s heel too. I miss the chatter most of all, y’know?”

“Ranger, this is hardly cond—”

“’Ey, this all’s just pleasantries, Doc. Nothin’ bad. No, sir. Just having a chat. Trying to, anyhow. You know, you were all big and bad when we were comin’ after ya and I heard some serious shit trying to talk to the Precursors.” Jake pushed in another helping of cheese and meat before he dusted his hands together, tipping the plate towards the two like this was his kitchen and he was offering them a snack from his own reserves. “Kinda weird seein’ him all buttoned up.”

Newton tugged up his collar behind Hermann before walking around to stand next to him. Hermann could tell without looking that Newton was struggling to keep his composure. The both of them were. But, beyond the simple needling of a man who was too comfortable with himself in their kitchen—yes, of course _their_ kitchen, damnit—Newton felt ashamed. He was ashamed that he was cowering, that he was forced to silence by his willfully rebellious mind and body. And he was ashamed of the guilt of his actions.

 _They were not your actions_ , Hermann thought, keeping a hand on Newton all the same.

 _You can’t lie in the Drift_ , Newton would answer, his catch all. His be all. His mantra.

The two did not speak, nor did they truly hear the exchange that they were playing out in their own heads, but they _felt_ that connection. It was real. Hermann had to believe in it. Newton….

\---

…and get fucked, dude. Like. You’re wrecking Hermann’s life, you prideful little prick. Nothing like your father, man, honestly. Honestly, he was scary but he was a good man. I’d follow Pentecost to hell, dude. You’ve been to hell already, Newt, you…okay, shut up? What are you doing?

 _My name’s Jake, mleh._ What are you, seriously. What’s with your whole fucking face? Tear your head off easier than ripping off a band aid. You think you’re funny now, man, but you weren’t laughing so hard when we nearly beat your ass to shit, dude. The whole fucking planet. And, yeah, no. No. No, not. Not like that. Not really. Not. You can’t. You can’t open that door. You can’t let them….

Okay, but he kinda deserves it? Leave Hermann alone, ya dick. Like, try me. Try me. Please. Try me. Come on, man. I’m _begging_ you, dude, honestly. Try my try me _try me try me **try me try**_ …

\---

…wasn’t ready for this level of interrogation. Not yet. They were still working on reacquainting him with the outside world, even if that world was the walls of their flat together. They weren’t about to open up the sandbox that was _the world_ and let Newton roam freely. But, yes, that was the definition of freedom by any stretch. So, yes, that was Hermann’s goal completely. Newton deserved freedom. If Jake was offering them a chance to get out…?

“Anyways, like I said. Secret mission for ya, if ya want it,” Jake said with a noncommittal shrug, ignoring the set of glares aimed at him.

“Is that a joke, Ranger Pentecost?”

“For the last bloody time, mate.” He laughed when he pushed away from the counter, coming closer to them. “You call me Jake. Yeah?”

“Fine. _Jake_.” Hermann chewed the name between his molars. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Tit for tat.” Hermann’s head tilt was about as good an answer as Jake was going to get, so he nodded and joined them over by the sofa again. He walked past as he picked up the tablet, holding it out for either Hermann or Newton to take. Newton had the free hand since Hermann was holding both Newton’s hand and his own cane. When he took it, Jake grinned easily. “Yeah, it’s a joke. Now answer one o’ mine?”

“What?” Hermann asked.

“Nuh-uh. You,” Jake said, pointing a finger to Newton.

Newton fidgeted for a second, looking down at the tablet in his hand before he locked eyes with Jake. “Yeah, man. What?”

Jake’s grin grew, almost reckless in nature. He jerked his chin towards the door. “D’you wanna get outta here?” They all looked at the door before Jake continued, “It’s real nice out there today. Sun’s up. Boardwalk’s actually open. Think some fresh air’d be good for you two.”

“How many of your men will be joining us on this excursion?” Hermann asked with a glower. Jake seemed to allow this question instead of cutting Hermann off again.

“Just the three of us. Promise on me mum. Fuck it, promise on Mako, how ‘bout that, eh?”

There was a little twitch under both Hermann and Newton’s right eye, possibly a happenstance mirror reaction, possibly an old residual anomaly from the Drift. Jake looked between them, waiting patiently.

“Where are we going?” Newton finally asked, and Jake relaxed, clapping his hands together.

“That’s the spirit. You’re kinda like Hermann here, man, aren’t ya? Ready to dig your hands into it?”

“That…is so wrong. What? No,” said Newton. Hermann was shaking his head “no” in agreement to Newton’s confusion. “Just. What’s this really about?”

“Secret. Miss-”

“—dude, if you say secret mission one more time, I’m gonna fuckin’ lose it. Why does he keep saying that?”

“He thinks he’s being friendly,” Hermann answered quietly.

“I _am_ being friendly. I’m getting you two geezers out of this flat for your own health, aren’t I?”

“Call me a geezer one more time. Come on.” Newton flapped his hand to his chest. “Come on. I dare you.”

Jake just bit his tongue between his smile and headed for the door. And, of course, of _course_ they followed him.

\---

“I said we should do more, right? I’m talkin’ fifty stories, holograms playin’ the final battle, fireworks and all, yeah? And nothin’ tasteless or anything, I mean the classiest fireworks you ever seen. A spectacle. See it from _space_ , mate, like….” Jake was rambling as they strolled towards the monument, looking to all like a nice young man giving two pale, almost sickly-looking gentlemen a tour of the city. “But…she wouldn’t want anything ostentatious.”

“Yeah, don’t think that’d be her style,” Newton answered conversationally, craning his neck to look at the buildings.

Contracts through the city had done a bang-up job repairing most of the damage caused by the megakaiju attack, but there were still scars throughout the infrastructure that would take more months to recover from. Hermann tried to keep Newton distracted, but he looked up so boldly, it was hardly going to be hidden from him forever.

“Nah. Dad’s neither. Listen, ya put me right in the fire chute and blast that shit to the ocean. One last fuck you to those kaiju fuckers.” Jake thrust a middle finger in the general direction of the ocean. “Don’t even need a statue of me. That’s all I need.”

“Could just do one of you flipping the bird,” Newton said. “Seems like that’d be your jam.”

Jake just slapped Newton on the shoulder, who recoiled into Hermann, trying not to look too offended.

“Bread and butter right there,” he said with a laugh. “Alright, ya geezers. Right this way.”

“I’m gonna fuckin’ murder him,” Newton muttered against Hermann.

“Yes, that might just be the case. Do wait until we’re somewhere less conspicuous.”

“No promises, dude.”

They approached a modest plaza that had been cut out of the busy city. More scooped out by the attack, but it afforded them a place that could use it. Dark marbled concrete surrounded a fountain with a familiar woman in military garb, looking up defiantly at the sky. The fountain itself was pristine white tile, like a spot of sunlight surrounding it, rippling in the clear water. A modest plaque beneath her feet announced her name, title, and accomplishments. They missed the bold blue streaks in her hair or the playful smile that broke out whenever they shared a joke. But it was unmistakably Mako Mori there.

“Who put the stargazer lilies there?” Hermann asked, gesturing with his elbow at the flowers planted near the benches surrounding the fountain.

“Wild guess, mate,” Jake answered, hands in his pockets as he looked up at the recreation of his sister. “They were her favorite, weren’t they?”

“Nah, dude, those were Raleigh’s,” Newton answered, his voice getting softer by the minute. Hermann gripped his arm, but Newton slipped out of it, stepping closer, as though he was hooked on an extra-terrestrial’s tractor beam.

“How’d he know that?” Jake asked with a little nudge, but his question was quickly forgotten.

“Newt,” Hermann whispered, but Newton casually waved him off, going right up to the edge of the fountain. “Jake, you didn’t think this could be highly stressful and potentially tr—”

Jake cut Hermann off with a look. What was his angle in all of this? What was he hoping to gain? What—

When Newton stepped over the marble barrier and into the water, Hermann jolted forward to go after him, only to have his elbow caught by Jake.

“Newton! Get out of there,” Hermann called. He sounded very much like he was just dead set against breaking the social mores of entering a fountain, but he didn’t like the distant look in Newton’s face or the way he crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “Newton. Jake, let go of me _this instant._ ”

“Hold up,” Jake muttered back. “Let ‘im figure it out.”

“What’s to figure out? He’s getting wet. That’s it.”

Newton was at the plaque, staring up at the marble statue of a Mako Mori he didn’t know. He knew her, of course. He knew who this was supposed to represent. But this Mako was done in the image of an older, sterner woman. A woman in a pristine uniform, who had carried such troubles and sorrows and command on her shoulders. Who still stood tall, looking up, daring whatever god or beast or creature to come and face her again. Or, at the very least, face the people that she left behind.

Ever so slowly, Newton reached out and touched the base of the statue, his hand right over plaque. It obscured the name, the position, but not the noted death toll of the city, the reminder of all the lives lost in the battle. He brushed his thumb over it a few times. Hermann felt his chest seize up, trying to vault over the little wall again in vain. Jake had a good hold on him. He toyed with the idea of beating him back with the cane. Show him what Hermann could do, that’s what.

“You’re being unnecessarily cruel. Did you discuss this with Dr. Sambre?”

“It’s not about being cruel,” Jake answered. “You think he’s a fragile egg, but he’s got important intel and we need it. It’s a mess and we gotta be ready so the next time don’t have us all with our heads shoved clear up our own arse.”

“How is _this_ supposed to—”

“She looks old,” Newton said quietly, tracing the numbers on the plaque. They covered both the attacks on MegaTokyo and the general attacks from the kaiju that had escaped the numerous breaches around the globe. They stopped and looked back at him. “Like. I mean, I know it was ten years. It was ten years, man.” Newton glanced over his shoulder, almost smiling. “It was ten… _fucking_ years, dude.”

“Newton,” Hermann started, but got a head shake in response.

“It was ten years,” Newton said again. He tamped his fist down on the statue’s base before he turned away from it. He held up his arms, looking at the sleeves, touching his chest and his stomach. His glasses. “I don’t. I don’t even need these. Did you know that? They…I mean I think I did…but they got my eyes fixed. I been wearing them for, like…for sentiment.” He laughed, taking the glasses off and folding them up before he put them on the statue. “They, like. Like. I don’t even…I don’t even know, man. I don’t.” Newton laughed again, a barking sound this time. “What is this, y’know? What is all this?”

Hermann yanked his arm free. Jake might say he let him go, but Hermann was determined as he vaulted himself into the fountain, grimacing when he lifted his leg to clear the wall. He trudged through the water and grabbed a hold of Newton’s arm. And, of course, Newton jerked back. He pushed his back flat against Mako Mori’s memorial statue like he could escape if he tried to fuse himself with the marble, his eyes wide, his smile painted on as sturdy as ever.

“A Million, Herms,” he whispered. His vision skipped over Hermann’s face, darting after some invisible insect he couldn’t trace. “Fucking _one-point-goddamn-one_. Me.”

“No, not you. It was those bloody Precursors and you are not allowed to say otherwise.”

“I mean, I kinda am? I drifted with them. Again and again and I knew something was up cause I could almost hear it? It was…it was so _weird_. But they were so fucking sneaky, Herms. I just thought it was stress? I dunno. Wine did _not_ help, let me start that off. But by the time it got clear, right? Right, it was too late. And I don’t really remember…I mean, snippets, honestly. It was so hard getting back up.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Hermann said insistently.

“Kinda think you have to, Herms. Kinda think I can’t keep ignoring it.”

“Not here,” Hermann said more insistently.

“Yeah. Running Man there’s gotta point.” Jake was leaning on the wall of the fountain, a hand out to draw them over. “Maybe not in the fountain, guys. People are looking.”

Hermann glowered over at Jake, who kept his hand unwavering for them to grab onto. He took Newton’s hand. “We’ll discuss this at home.”

“Eventually?” Newton asked, his smile less manic and forced.

“Eventually,” Hermann agreed, taking as much of Newton’s weight as he could manage as they marched back across the pool. They left Newton’s glasses on the statue. “And I refuse to go on anymore missions for you, Ranger Pentecost.”

“Jake, if you please,” Jake said, charming smile and all, the bastard. He helped Hermann over the wall, Newton climbing out easily beside him.

“I don’t please,” Hermann answered bitterly.

“I please would like to get out of here…please,” Newton said, wringing out his pantlegs. “It’s some kinda bullshit that I’m skinny enough now I might actually start shivering.” Neither of them commented on the 25° C. “You still have that parka, Herms? I want the parka. Can we go home?”

“We can go home,” Hermann agreed, taking Newton’s arm when they were on level ground. “Correct, Ranger—”

“It’s Jake. You know it. I know it. You call me Ranger again, I’ll—”

“Hey!” Newton shouted, jabbing a finger at Jake’s face. “Don’t disrespect your elders, kid.”

Jake rolled his eyes, leading them back through the city to the housing complex. It wasn’t far, of course, but it was the most exercise the two had seen in a long time and they were sorely grateful to see their building. Even better when they were inside where it was familiar and safe.

Newton was actually shivering, his teeth chattering when they went inside. He made a quick quip to the guards out front but rushed through the door, pawing at the various coats hanging in the foyer. “P-Parka, H-H-Herms?”

“Hall closet,” Hermann answered, looking after him with concern. But before he closed the door, he barred the entrance with his cane, keeping Jake out. “Next time, you’ll give us a proper warning before you show up. Am I clear, Ranger?”

“That’s cute,” Jake said, swatting the cane down. “You want a warning? Put it on your schedule then that I’ll be back tomorrow by noon.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m not joking about needing that information outta your boyfriend’s head there, Doc.”

“He’s not my—”

“Semantics aside, I’m serious.”

Jake watched Newton pull three coats off the hangars and drag them further into the flat, shimmying out of his pants on his way to the couch where he effectively built himself a nest. There was the barest glimpse of very pale thigh before he was all bundled up, grumbling to himself.

“What happened?” Hermann asked, something screwing up the center of his intestines. Jake only gave him a pointed look, guiding Hermann’s gaze to the tablet.

“I had Reyes send over what we’ve got. Listen, I don’t wanna rush his recovery neither, but…we _need_. To know. Y’know? I can give you ‘till tomorrow, mate. I’m doing the best I can with what we’ve got, yeah?”

Hermann could scarcely breathe. He nodded wordlessly at Jake, his mouth a thin, grim line. Jake patted Hermann’s shoulder before he left. He walked carefully back into the flat, his gaze distant. Newton peeked up from his bundle, his smile faltering.

“What is it?” Newton asked, his voice cracking.

“I think we’ve hit ‘eventually.’”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something is *happening* and they need Newt to give them the *answers.* 
> 
> When are they going to get to eat, drink and be married, guys? WHEN? ("eventually" is my only answer for you, Also I feel like I should have titled this fic "Eventually? Eventually." C'est la vie.)


	5. Don't Hate Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake had mentioned an anomaly that must be addressed and Newton may be the only one who knows. Or does he? It's hard to talk when your brain is refusing to cooperate. Hermann, of course, is there to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo, so this was quick and frantic because I'm quick and frantic, but I figured a panic attack is right up there with what Newton has to go through. That, and I'm 300% positive this will need edits, so bear with me. Bare with me? Anyways, enjoy!

The easiest way to launch their discussion would be to open the tablet and pull down the data that Ranger Pentecost had sent over courtesy of Ranger Jules Reyes. It had to be serious if Jake insisted on returning tomorrow at noon. There was a deadline looming over them, a proverbial War Clock waiting to start ticking down to the next Apocalypse in the old Shatterdomes once more. Hermann could feel the damp chill sneaking into his bones, but perhaps that was more residual empathy watching Newton curled up in all those coats beside him.

“H-How much?” Newton asked, trembling like a cornered mouse.

“How much what?” Hermann said, catching himself before he slipped out a pet name, which was sitting just on the tip of his tongue. A surprising flourish added to his linguistics he never assumed to adapt.

“How much…d’you wanna know?”

 _Everything_ , Hermann thought with a fire roiling in his stomach, but he couldn’t ask that. Not yet. He would ask for so much if they were willing, but not.... Not yet. Instead, he sat back on the couch and offered Newton room to come to him. By his own volition, of course. Newton had been promised complete agency when within their flat and Hermann would never ever break that.

Newton leaned against him, of course. He had the mess of coats clutched tight around his shoulders and chest. Blankets would be far superior, but he had grabbed hastily and set himself there as he was. When he came over, his skinny legs stuck out and he tucked them in against Hermann’s side, just about jutting them up into his ribs. It was almost painful.

“They’re going to ask you about the Precursors’ plans,” Hermann said, repeating himself from earlier.

“Y-Y-Yeah,” Newton chattered back. Good lord, he was literally vibrating with cold. Why was he freezing? “Th-They…f-f-f-ound something?”

“Found something?” Hermann repeated, wrapping his arms tightly around Newton and the coats and rubbing him up and down to warm him up. “What on earth would they find, Newton?”

“Not Earth,” Newton answered with a shaky smile, looking up at Hermann. He motioned to push up his glasses, which were no longer on his face. In fact, they had forgotten said spectacles on Mako Mori’s monument in the city. Newton frowned, ever so slightly, drawing his fist back down to his chest.

“What do you mean, ‘not Earth?'” Hermann pressed, his voice dropping. He reached up to stroke Newton’s cheek, concern flashing plainly on his face as he reached further and held his palm against Newton’s forehead. “You’re burning up.”

“Y-You are,” Newton said with a shadow of a grin, closing his eyes to lean up into Hermann’s hand. He hummed, twitching, his chin wobbling before he clenched his jaw tighf, as though to wrestle control again. Something Hermann thought Newton was very much proficient at. “You are.”

“Newton?” Hermann kept touching Newton’s forehead, his other hand trailing down to find his wrist and attempt to take his pulse. He was breathing fine; maybe a little shaky from it all, and his pulse wasn’t terribly fast, but it was not strong either. “I’m calling Dr. Sambre.”

“No.” Newton opened his eyes and grabbed Hermann’s wrist tightly, far faster than either of them expected. He looked up with those bright blue eyes, fixed on a point on Hermann’s face. “N-No. Herms? ‘m tired. And ‘m…s-so c-cold.”

“Yes, I know, and you need a doctor.”

“You’re a d-d-doctor.”

Hermann grimaced, not wishing to humor him. “You need a _medical professional._ ”

“No,” Newton whispered. His grip was very strong, despite his sweaty palms and shivering frame.

“I don’t want to argue this,” Hermann hissed, tasting something bitter and acrid at the back of his throat. “It’s only a call, Newton. Surely no harm from that.”

Newton yanked down harder, with enough force to pull Hermann back to the sofa when he lost his balance. He gripped Hermann tightly, clinging to him, burying his face against Hermann’s neck. And, in that moment, simply for the moment, Hermann let him. He raised his hand to pry himself loose only to pat Newton’s back and rub a circle to soothe him.

“Okay,” he whispered at last. “Okay. I won’t call a doctor.”

“You’re a doctor,” Newton whispered again, his voice caught somewhere on the precipice of a laugh and a sob.

“This coming from the man with six PhDs.”

That forced another laugh out of Newton, something vibrating through him as his fingers clawed up and down Hermann’s arm with the same veracity of a bird of prey looking for their perch. He gave a few wet laughs, sniffling towards the end before he pulled back. Newton would not meet his gaze. That was rarely good. Newton was, almost to a fault, stubborn on abrasive and adamant about meeting a man in the eye at least. His face was red and he kept touching his lip only to drop his hand again.

“You must breathe, Newton,” Hermann said softly, watching him. If anything worse presented, any symptom that shifted from this, Hermann would force himself up to go make that call. He had to study and watch and wait for the opportunity. “You must breathe for me.”

“For you?” Newton laughed, wiping his forearm quickly across his face. “Anything for you, man.”

Hermann pressed his fingertip under Newton’s chin, guiding his vision up from the distant spot he was staring at until they were finally looking at each other. Hardly a steady gaze. Newton kept flicking his vision away, trying to squirm and escape or close his eyes, but his face remained in place and that was about as much as Hermann could ask for.

“Let’s get you a bath,” Hermann said, grabbing Newton’s chin before he could jerk away in response. “Just a bath. I’ll even go gather that hideous parka you requested, and we’ll put you to bed. You can rest while I get some things sorted. Read up. How does that sound?”

“You don’t h-h-a-ave all the info…the information, d-dude,” Newton answered, his throat warbling despite himself.

“Maybe. Not yet.”

Hermann leaned forward and kissed Newton’s forehead. Damn this stubborn man but he was burning up. He made no show of noticing, simply pressing his lips to make contact and pulling back. Newton shivered harder, for a moment, and then seemed to settle again.

Hermann greatly wished he had the physical form strong enough to both lift Newton off the couch and carry him off to the bathroom, throwing open the door easily to set him gently against the tub and undress him, but that was as wild a fantasy as suddenly sprouting wings. Instead, he had to gently coax Newton off the sofa, both with words and nudges and the occasional kiss of his knuckles as incentive. It was almost akin to herding a dog or a small child, but this grown man was willing to move, despite his body’s sudden ailment. He kept the coats as a cape of sorts, promising he was fine. Promising he could walk. Promising everything would be better soon, which seemed the only lie that nearly knocked him back to his knees.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” he said _again_ when they almost crashed into the wall. “So fucking useless. Useless. Herms. I can. I got this. So fucking—”

“That’s alright. You’re alright. That’s perfectly alright,” Hermann would answer in kind after each expletive. He let the little furnace cling to him, wrapping an arm around Newton’s waist to keep him upright. “Just this way. A quick bath. You’re alright, darling. Just this way. You’re alright, Newton.”

Neither of them seemed to notice.

The bathroom was no master suite bath with room to spare. It had the sink, a toilet, a medicine cabinet. There was the tub with the shower and that bar running along the wall for Hermann. A rug, of course. Toothbrushes on the sink, of course. Newton’s towel waiting on the tub basin for him to show up and use it. Of course. Hermann seemed to be flushed and sweaty just as much as Newton was by the time they arrived, almost crashing into the tub itself. Newton sat there, catching his breath while Hermann righted himself and smoothed out his clothing.

“Right. There we are. Just as promised. Get you in the tub. I suppose water first,” Hermann was muttering, reminding himself of his actions as he did them. He shuffled around Newton, a bracing hand on his back as he reached to start the tap. The pipes themselves were new and efficient and they had hot water in a flash. “Just strip you down and we should be—”

“I can do this,” Newton insisted with his chin tucked down into the multitude of collars close to his neck.

“Pardon?” Hermann asked, wiping his forehead when he turned to look at him.

“I can do this,” Newton repeated.

“Oh, I’m sure you can. But let me help. Surely I—”

Newton carefully dropped the coats from his shoulders in that he let go suddenly and they went straight into the bathwater. Hermann protested, a loud yelp, fishing them out and setting them over in the sink before they dribbled water _everywhere._

“What on earth do you—”

“Not Earth,” Newton said again with a little laugh. He reached out and grabbed a hold of Hermann’s waist, pulling him back to the bathtub so he could hug against his hip.

\---

_What are you doing? Tell him to go. Tell him to leave. What are you doing?_

\---

Hermann made muffled protesting remarks to the sink but gave up on that quickly, settling down so he could rub Newton’s back.

“Herms?”

“Yes, Newton?”

“Your bath is going to overflow soon.”

“ _Your_ bath is going to overflow soon,” he answered petulantly, stretching over to shut the tap off while Newton held onto him. He stood back up, returning to pet him.

“Herms?” Newton asked again. At the very least he wasn’t shivering anymore. That was some small miracle.

“Yes, Newton?”

“You can hate me if you want, I totally get it. I expect that, like, seriously. Above all else. But, also, could you, like, maybe not?”

Hermann stopped stroking Newton’s back, stopped petting his hair, and twisted about on one leg to face him directly. He cupped Newton’s face, tipping it up to meet his eyes.

“I won’t hate you,” Hermann promised.

Newton shook his head, laughing as a defense. Laughing as a means to deflect. Laughing to make a sound above the quiet in their cramped little bathroom next to the tub. It was a very well insulated flat it seemed. If only Newton maintain eye contact again. If only. Hermann let him, simply because it was a means to relieve some of the stress. It hurt, of course, but he couldn’t snap at him for laughter, as forced as it was.

Newton shifted back to eye the water. He looked strangely small and fragile in a pair of pale boxers and his three layers of shirts, including the high collar, long sleeves, and shirt tail that covered his rear. The boxers were perhaps the saddest. No fun little cartoons on them this time. Hermann had seen, on a few rare occasions, the edge of Newton’s boxers and briefs peak out of his pair of skinny black jeans in the lab they shared back. Each and every time they had been a wild neon color or had bold cartoon creatures printed on them in various stances. These now were modest. Loose. Drab. They looked like they had come straight from Hermann’s wardrobe and that panged him in some way. He thought about buying Newton something to replace them, for the simple act of returning to himself. Returning to what once was, but better.

“It’s so weird,” Newton started, shaking his head. “I know. I know I have to tell you, man.”

“You don’t—”

“I do,” Newton insisted. “I’m trying, Herms.”

“Alright.”

Newton was gripping the bathtub, rocking on the edge of it, perhaps an inch or so in both directions. He stared at his slightly red knees, steam from the water coiling up behind him. Everything. Everything just made him look small and Hermann wanted nothing more than to bundle him up and kiss him until they forgot all of this. But he stood, leaning a hard on his cane.

“I think…that that Pentecost kid—”

“Jake?”

\---

_Get away get away from him get away you can’t tell him you can’t tell him anything you can’t—_

\---

“Yeah, fuck him,” Newton answered suddenly, jutting out his chin. Hermann gave him a warm smile. Newton simply rolled his eyes, breathing deeply before he continued. “Anyways. He’s gonna tell you there’s an anomaly, right?”

“He had mentioned some disturbing data.”

“Right.” Newton licked his lips nervously, pulling them back into an animalistic smile. Barring his teeth again, as it were. “It’s a tear. Not a breach. Not completely. They’re still…they’ve got….” Newton rocked a little faster, breathing harder, like a vice was tightening around him as he tried to explain. “They’re trying to…ha, they’re going to push through. It didn’t work with the grunts. And…nnn. It didn’t work with the big bastard either, Christ almighty. _Fuck_.”

Hermann knelt on his good knee, taking Newton’s hands when he went to grab him, to stop him.

“Take your time,” Hermann assured him, pulling his shoulders free when Newton took a fistful of his shirt. He smiled and shushed, clasping Newton’s hands between his own. “I’m not going to rush you.”

“It’s not. They showed me how to clone, y’know, to get kaiju brain matter into the drone pilots because…I mean of course because…something with the Drift. Something. We keep beating them back, right? It’s just bigger and bigger and bigger constructs, hoping to overwhelm with size alone, but they keep…ignoring…simple ingenuity, really. And they can’t trust…it’s something. It’s something, but I can’t…quite….” Newton shook his head. “It’s….” He freed one of his hands to pump his fist against his chest, tapping out a rhythm to keep breathing to. “Hermann. I think. I think they’re going to try….”

\---

_STOP. TALKING. NOW._

\---

“Try what?” Hermann asked softly, squeezing Newton’s hand a little tighter.

“Clones. We learned they were clones, d’you remember? There’s something…I mean, remember Hannibal? Fuckin’…it’s not a one-way street. Simple principle, of course, when you look at the neural load and how we have to create the Drift. What am I even saying, dude, that’s your science. Okay. But? I don’t…know. I know. But. It was in the Drift, dude. You saw, okay? You saw it. And then maybe you can…like…..”

Newton was breathing faster, gasping for air at this point. Clear signs of panic. Hermann stood up, ignoring a tremor through his leg as he wrapped up Newton again. The compression helped, as it had the very first time he pulled Newton to the surface from the Precursors. But it wasn't enoigh. Newton was still gasping. Hermann put his hand flat on Newton’s chest, breathing slowly, loudly for him, showing him the tempo he should adopt. He nodded when Newton locked eyes with him.

“You’re still here,” he said with an easy smile. Not easy to pull off, Lord knows, but Hermann was putting on his best act yet. Breathing. “Breathe against my hand. Just like so. Deeper than that. There we are. That’s how you do it.” He pushed down when Newton exhaled, then back up again. It was shaky at first, of course, but soon they had a tempo that was more sustainable as Newton pulled himself out of his panic attack. “There we go,” Hermann muttered, keeping an even, low tone. “You’re still here.”

Newton only offered short, mumbled sounds as a response, shaking again like he had just stepped out of a frozen pond. Hermann rubbed his shoulders, trying to soothe down the gooseflesh he could see crawling over Newton’s exposed skin.

“How’s about a nice bath, hm?” Hermann continued rubbing Newton’s arms, holding him steady. “Get you warmed up. And I’ll still be here.”

The adrenaline had burned clean through him, it seemed. Newton nodded weakly, swallowing whatever response he had ready in the barrel. He leaned against Hermann, accepting his gentle ministrations. Soon he was back to heavy limbs and quiet, even breathing.

The boxers themselves were easy to shed, almost loose on his hips. They slipped down to his feet with the barest effort. Hermann kept a clinical, careful approach to things, looking into Newton’s face as he undressed him. The first shirt was quick. Damp down the back, the armpits, and the bottom edge from when they had waded sloppily through the fountain, but it didnt cling too badly. It was the second collared shirt that took some convincing, but Newton didn’t have any fight left in him and, eventually, he let Hermann undo the buttons down the front.

To keep them both occupied, Hermann started listing what they might make for dinner. He had a few recipes he had come across earlier that might interest them. He argued with himself out loud whether one had too much pepper in it and if it would upset their stomachs or if they were just going to man through it and live a little. Like chili powder and Bhut Jolokia were any way to find a thrill. It helped him ignore the scarring, which did in fact crisscross up Newton’s forearms, racing ladder marks up to his shoulders. Hermann didn’t allow his hands to linger, simply petting Newton’s hair when the shirt was discarded and discussing rice pilaf.

It was the final plain t-shirt underneath everything that posed the greatest difficulty. Both in that Newton would have to lift his arms so Hermann could remove it and that, without it, he would be truly naked.

“And I say you can’t do it without the mushrooms, so of course we’re getting…Newton.” He stroked Newton’s face when his arms didn’t raise an inch. “It’s just the last article. Please?”

Newton finally looked up. It was enough to sting, truly, as Hermann swiped his thumb carefully beneath Newton’s eyes to flick away a few tears.

“I won’t hurt you,” Hermann whispered. He smiled, stretching back to pat his own stomach. “And I’ll hardly judge you. You’ve seen this pathetic excuse for a body. It’s just…meat. At best.”

“It’s more than meat, Hermann,” Newton said, his mouth twitching into a smile at the corner. Ever the biologist there to defend.

“Right. Well. More than meat still needs to be cleaned. Up with the arms.”

Newton closed his eyes and, with what appeared to be far more effort than it was worth, he put his arms above his head. Hermann took the opportunity while it was afforded to him to lean in and kiss Newton, who was surprised enough that he propped his elbows up on Hermann’s shoulder, flattening his hair down to hold him a little closer. His breathing shortened when Hermann slid his hands under the t-shirt, pulling it up and over his head right when he broke away. He meant to smile when Newton was undressed, to praise him, but his mouth dropped despite his better efforts.

Newton slipped back into the water, curling up into a fetal position.

“Hey,” he muttered up, his face turned to the side, his features relaxed. One might even say slack. One might even say expressionless.

“Yes, Newton?” Hermann answered after he snapped his mouth up and came to sit on the edge of the tub with him. He let his hand drift down in the water, relieved beyond measure that Newton took his hand and tugged it closer.

“Don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.” Because, of course, Hermann promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha HA! Sorry again. I know what's on Newton's chest, if that makes you feel any better. And you will too. Again. Sorry.


	6. Before I Forget

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One man's sleep is another man's study hour. Something like that.
> 
> Hermann gets a chance to review Newton's lesson plan. We hope there's something useful in there. (Royal we, of course. You'll forgive me for that).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to be very disjointed because have you ever filled out a giant questionnaire and gotten confused and bored? You sure have, buddy! I don't know, but I hope you will actually forgive me for that and the fact that it's a much shorter chapter. Also! A lot of the typos are intentional in this one.

Dinner quickly became half-eaten pizza slices from a surprisingly quaint little pizzeria four blocks away. The box was left on the kitchen island and two glasses of ginger beer released carbonation next to the sink. Neither of them had the energy allocated to cook anything, especially since Hermann would have to cook twice to make up for it. Pretending to eat to convince the other they were doing alright was a chore in and of itself.

After a brief argument on sleeping arrangements—"I’m just gonna take the couch.” “Preposterous. You slept here last night. You’ll sleep here tonight. You’re taking the right side and that’s final.” “You don’t get to say ‘that’s final,’ like you’re—” “That’s. _Final_!” “That’s not how that _works_ , Hermann!” _—_ Newton was curled up on the bed in a long-sleeved sweatshirt from his duffel bag and a pair of green flannel pyjama trousers borrowed from Hermann. Newton had to roll them up three times at his ankles, so they didn’t cover his feet. Hermann thought socks to bed was completely standard and didn’t understand why he needed his feet free, but to see him finally relaxed made any further arguing moot. For the moment, at least.

Hermann propped himself up with an extra pillow under his hip, resting his tablet on his thigh. He glanced over the edge of his reading glasses, listening to Newton snore softly into the pillow. The night before he may have been faking, Hermann realized, but the man was human. He had to collapse from exhaustion at some point. His hand curled slightly by his face, pawing for something. Hermann thought he might burst a capillary under his left eye from want as he reached over and swept away that fluffy dark hair. At least the panic-induced fever episode was over with.

With a sigh, Hermann settled in and read through the report. It was the best thing he could think of to elucidate the proverbial nightmare haunting Newton’s conscience. He’d seen Reye’s notes on the anomaly, but they didn’t make sense. And Newton wasn’t being his usual verbose self. So, instead, he tracked back to a part of Newton that was yet unencumbered by the unidentified verbal gag that was keeping him quiet.

\---

_More than anything, I would like to point out that to go into a Drift like this, by far, is as_ alien as the creatures we’re connecting with. I say we like I mean “the Royal ‘we’” and not even that, because, I don’t need to pump up my own ego here. I don’t have to describe to you the complete, batshit insanity (sorry Nora, you’ll forgive me, right?) that comes with your standard human on human neural Drift. It’s bananas. And I say that lightly because if I have to start thinking about the neural fuckery you can get with a compatible Drift partner who decides to duplicate old blueprints to build an off brand, unregulated, honestly dangerous Pons neural Drift unit, I’m going to find myself ten feet under with their grubby hands all over my again. Enjoy the metaphors and such, because I can already tell you that the little piece of Herms still lurking in the corner is rather annoyed by them. We’ll make do. Royal we, Nora. Royal we.

We. Forgive me again, Nora. I know. I remember.

Here’s the thing, though, right? You might surmise that it was entirely their fault for the allure in the first place. If you have an enemy at the control panel, as it were, you’re going to assume that they put in the programming from the start to skate on by under the radar. You can go on and on about intrusive thoughts until both of us are blue in the face, but that should have been tip number one. Should it have? See, I can’t exactly recall if that was normal beforehand either. Insecurities are one thing. Anxiety, Jesus in a can, but maybe. I don’t want to even think about the idea of cracking him open to check if there’s any bugs in his head either, but I really want to know. I want that tangible knowledge that this didn’t get spread around like herpes, because maybe that’s just me thinking it and not

Forgive me again, Nora. What’s the tally for that, by the way? I could scroll up and check, but, I really want to get this over with. He’s making this pasta dish thing and it smells amazing. Why didn’t I know he could cook? I really want to take lessons. Honestly, I’m salivating. It’s a good thing, though, because it’s real. Fuck lesson plan four, but I guess I know what you were doing. Do the thing, I know. Okay but I know I’m working the muscles and I know I want the food and oh my god, patient to doctor confidentiality right but I could really just fucking kiss him you know and I bet it would like something just out of a stupid movie sequence like I can hear the music already and I know that ones real too because they didn’t have time for all that bullshit because it wasn’t part of the Plan. “The Plan.” Fucking just.

Yeah. Yes. I rolled my eyes. Did you?

I don’t know, because that’s where it gets confusing.

Let’s try this again.

\---

**Question 6. Describe your relation to the detox. List three examples of physical and mental sensations:**

Nora. It. Fucking. Sucks.

Skip.

(yeah yes Fine. Put it on Tuesdays)

Note: look in the tank.

\---

**Example 14. Relate back to question 6 for physical and mental descriptors. Based on mechanisms from Lesson 4, try to relate the success of methods used today.**

You would, wouldn’t you.

\---

No, wait, before I forget. I need a refill of the Zaleplon.

Anyways. Its not great, but I lied to him before and I have to I guess make up for that. Nora, I’m so fucking tired why do you make these a billion pages long? I’m making them a billion pages long to spite you. Sift through that shit up there okay I dare you. Also I hope you get a kick out of that extra pattern in the connect. See I can be creative too.

\---

I DONT think it was because of that first one, although, yeah, that was fucking stupid. I mean, honestly, I was just trying to prove I was right and god it’s so weird that that terrifies me now. Is it bad that I like that at least I’ve got him sitting in the corner there to remind me to like not kill myself over something like being right? That’s hypothetical, Nora, we both know that’s so not the right way to put that. I know we’ve discussed this already but do you think I could get in contact with her soon to try and get something new to cover it? It’s going to get hotter out and I want to be able to wear a stupid fucking t-shirt again.

Right, I know. Refer to the Mechanisms Learned in Lesson Nora I swear to god you’re just doing this to mock me. Thank god this thing has autocorrect. I had to use his tablet this time so twenty bucks says he’s reading over this right now. Hermann, I love you, buddy, but you don’t have to be “that” protective. Also, ignore the part about kissing you. Unless I already did in which case do that again maybe? Ignore the other shit though. I hat et you could be looking at this actually just I could delete everything and start over but I want that dinner why didn t I do this tomorrow

That’s so stupid, I hate pretending like I’m actually having a conversation with him through this when I can have a conversation him right now. He’s cooking right now Nora and I want him.

Before I forget, I need a refill of the Zaleplon. Did I put that down already? I can’t remember. Either way. I know it’s a lot to ask but if I can’t Drift with him again than I don’t know what else to do about it. It’s that or

Either way, we’ll talk about it.

\---

No.

\---

No.

\---

Yes. (uuugh I’m tired why isn’t this done you have to stop making these a billion questions long)

\---

No

\---

No

No

Yes

Blue I don’t know

Yes

yes

no

x ah cause it won’t let me skip right

x

x

x

Nora I swear to fucking god

X

-

\--

\----dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

Jfa d

D

Definitely. Did you look? Need to look in the tank. No, wait, before I forget, Look in the tank. Look in the tank there was something else look in the tank that I know I should look in the tank remember to ask you before we look in the tank meet on Tuesday. It was Tuesday this week right? I’ll check when this is done. Which will be never because you look in the tank made it

\---

X

\---

F

U

C

K

T

H

I

S

S

S

Yes

\---

Wait, before I forget can you put in a refill for Zaleplon holy god Nora 216. 216? My eyes have glazed over for half of those, I hope you know that. So have fun with half those answers because I refuse to edit it when this doesn’t have to be published in a journal. You’ll excuse me because uh I’m the crazy bastard who s under arrest or whatever, semantic s aside. I told you he’s making dinner, right? That one I definitely said but I’m going to eat some of that now so just list it off here:

  1. Of course I want to, it hurts how much I want to
  2. No
  3. I can’t remember
  4. I can’t remember that either
  5. Checklist or something, I’ll see if he can go buy me one. Hell, maybe they’ll let me go and I can go buy one. I know “let me go” but just let me keep the colloquialism before I break his tablet, which he told me not to do so there
  6. Not intentionally
  7. Intentionally – see what I did there?
  8. I actually can’t remember that n e either can we put that on Tuesdays?
  9. Look in the tank (that one seems important for some reason OH! He’s done, I’m gonna go eat now. Yeah, we’re listing that too because uh all of this is stupid and it makes me feel like Im in the third grade again so as ever I hate this. This has been so much fun. Can we try to parse it down to, like a cool ten next time? 2 no. TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN NORA.



-thump print recognition-

\---

Newton stirred then, rolling from his right to his left. He sighed, mumbling nonsense words as he reached over and grabbed Hermann’s kneecap, startling him. He looked up, half-expecting to see a monster or Newton staring up at him with a wild, unfocused look in his eyes. But he was still snoring and he shifted in closer, hugging his arm across Hermann’s waist. There was no arguing that the affection was needed for both of them.

Hermann pushed up his glasses into his hairline, rubbing his eyes into their sockets. There was no point trying to parse out the limited information he could from a frankly disjointed report. He felt a headache brewing. A yawn erupted from him before he could stifle it and he stretched his arms above his head, leaving the warm tablet on his lap. Almost worth it. He felt like he could have an answer, but it was late and his vision was starting to go fuzzy from looking at the illuminated screen in the dark of his room. He needed to think. He needed to ask a few questions. He needed to slip his glasses off and slide down into the bed, pull Newton closer to him, and kiss his forehead gently. Which he did.

Newton stirred, drawing his eyebrows down in a scowl, which Hermann thumbed across gently to get him to relax.

“…s’you okay?” Newton whispered, his voice soft and thick with sleep.

“I’m fine,” Hermann answered, studying his face. “I’m fine. Go to sleep.”

“Mm.” Newton tucked his chin down, lightly headbutting Hermann’s chest. He muttered something that was lost against fabric and skin. Hermann was perhaps a little paranoid when he thought he heard “tank.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brad Pitt voice: WHAT'S IN THE TANK


	7. Score One For Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As promised, Jake returns the next day to ask some questions and Newton decides he'd rather talk about Jurassic Park, thank you very much.

Jake did as promised and rang them this time before he tried knocking on the door. If it was perhaps a minute between the two actions, that was still considered a great kindness. Newton pushed away a mostly untouched plate of food and Hermann was at the door to greet their visitor. Their _warden_ more like. He did his best not to roll his eyes at Jake’s face.

“Still boggles the mind,” he muttered, dragging a stool from the kitchen island and carrying it with him back on towards the couch. “It’s _clutter_!”

“Yeah, man, you get used to it,” Newton answered from his side of the couch, crossing one leg over the other and relaxing back with an arm draped behind Hermann. “Alright?”

“Yeah, I get ya loud and clear, like.” Jake shrugged, perched atop the stool. It put him at a height advantage that couldn’t be ignored and could not possibly be happenstance. “I dunno. Little bits and pieces of stuff I learned from my sister and all. Doesn’t add up.”

“You came to the right guy to get the numbers to fit,” Newton answered, jerking a thumb in Hermann’s direction.

The two had been…quiet. A little distant that morning, if they were honest. Neither thought it prudent to bring up unwanted discussion points and so did their morning chores of cooking, cleaning, dressing, breathing. Newton scrubbed the pans in the sink. Hermann organized some of the “clutter” on the coffee table, relegating space for it on his desk instead. There were few touches, fewer pleasantries. It was almost painful after waking up entangled with each other, like shame had somehow wedged itself between them.

So when they went to the couch to report and listen to whatever Jake had for them, Hermann thought his chest was going to rip open when he felt Newton slip in easily next to him. His mouth pressed into a tight line, but there was a twitch in the corner. A smile.

 _Oh, thank God. He doesn’t hate me,_ Hermann thought, tensing his fist on Newton’s thigh before he flattened his fingers and simply let it rest there. He gripped the unnecessarily tiny handle to his cup and drank down sweetened Earl Gray, feeling love. Feeling love for certain, above the apprehension and the fear and the headache. Feeling love.

Newton felt the same.

“Yeah, not lookin’ for a math problem,” Jake answered, pushing his lips out in thought. “You think you can talk to us today then?”

“I’m talking right now,” Newton answered with a shrug. “Right? So, like, score one for me.”

“An’ ya went and looked over the data package?”

“I did not.”

Jake tweaked an eyebrow up as a question, which got him arms crossed and a cheeky head tilt in response.

“I did,” Hermann said after a time. “You said there was unusual radiation coming off a fixed point near Australia. Curious, of course, but it’s not the exact pattern we’re used to seeing when they would come through like last time. It’s not in the Mariana Trench, so. I’m interested to know why you think this has something to do with the breach?”

“It ain’t a breach per se,” Jake said, hooking his feet around the wrung of the stool. “That part your dead on. You lot collapsed that sucker and poof. Stopped the Apocalypse.”

They could remember the celebration fondly. Mostly. Perhaps less than that.

The Shatterdome had erupted in cheers, jubilation spilling from individuals in messy hugs, tears, laughter, embraces, almost intimacy, mourning, fist fights. Tendo had practically started a riot with song choices and drinks were spilling out of the ironworks like a gas leak. There were hazy moments, often too loud to recollect exactly what had been said. Hermann recalls their lab and the couch tucked away and a rare moment of quiet before the proverbial storm. Had they slept together then? One man drowsing sleepily atop the other after the simple exhaustion of drifting with the kaiju brain and relaying their information, waiting with baited breath for the Jaegers to take their payload to the breach and collapse it…they had passed out somewhere, at least. Together. At least. But that was ten bloody years ago and it was scrubbed away by guilt, by anger, by confusion, by loss.

“Kinda,” Newton said, breaking Hermann’s reverie. He glanced over, studying his partner’s face. “Obviously we collapsed the entrance, right, that one is, as you said, ‘dead on.’ Alright, so, that doesn’t mean the biomatter here isn’t important to them. We confiscated tons. You would think that after ten years, it’s gone and been spent and deteriorated beyond use, but the black market out there is still trading and I guarantee you can find shit. God, you think Hannibal Chau was the only one? He was great, but, no. No. I can’t…I know there’s more. I know there’s more.”

Hermann patted his thigh when Newton pushed his knuckle into his temple. He was trying to remember information that was either deleted by the Precursors or changed entirely. It was difficult to sort through the noise, but Hermann was patient. Jake, for his part, said nothing, and that was exceptionally helpful as well.

“Look, they don’t have the resources yet to reopen it like they want to. And I’m telling you, they want to. Obviously. It’s a fucking plague they need to wipe us all out. Frustrating, really, because they’ve just been doing this over and over and over since forever and we’re the tiny bastards that are mucking up their shit, right?” Newton laughed, the humor unable to reach his eyes. “And I’m not saying we’re going to start seeing tears in our reality with little kaiju bugs slipping through, but….”

“But?” Hermann asked quietly.

Newton shrugged, looking to Hermann for answers. _I wish I had them_ , Hermann thought.

“Didn’t you say they were cloning all of ‘em?” Jake asked, punching into their moment. “Right? The kaijus?”

“Yes,” Newton answered, whipping his head back around to face Jake. Already, Hermann could see the jolt of electricity in his stunningly blue eyes. “We assumed they were each offspring from the last, similar in structure but with enough variants that, I mean, it’s assumed. We assumed. But, you look at the DNA, and it’s so obviously clear. You look in their _heads_ , and it’s laid out for you clear as day. They can bioengineer whatever they want. I’m being facetious, but am I? Their tech is astounding. I mean, we can toss around the word ‘replicator’ if we want, but, essentially, they restructure necessary genomes like they’re knitting a scarf and recreate mass with molecules they designed basically at will in order to make up the biomass components they need, while pulling directly from the engineered monsters they’ve already made. Send one soldier on it’s way, pull from the catalogue of tissue scraped off the test tube baby. It’s almost perfect recycling, really, which is laughable coming from a species that wipes out everything they set foot on, devouring resources like fucking locusts, honestly. All that energy going into essentially terraforming for their convenience and then gorging themselves. Terraforming, sorry. Terraforming for us. What is it, just, ante-forming _at best_ for them? It’s bizarre in its simplicity.”

Newton was talking quickly again, swinging his hands back and forth as he parsed out thoughts, setting imaginary blocks on an invisible table to look at and poke as his mind needed them. He almost sounded like his old self, really, and Hermann gripped his tea with both hands, watching him.

“Here’s the kicker,” Newton went on. “The astronomical amount of energy that goes into engineering beings of that size is obvious, yes, but they’ve perfected that recycling. Replication. I mean, I have maybe a glimpse of it, but I know our cloning tech now is eons behind them. The real part, right? The real part that’s holding them back is that the ‘breach’ they cut open in order to go after their next target is the proverbial tapeworm to their energy stores. They do it once. They can cut open their esophagus portal _once_ and shunt off the soldier class one at a time. Two at a time. Even three, but that took a toll on them and it’s going to take time to recover. That’s the time we have, right?”

“Time for what?” Jake asked, leaning forward on his hands so he looked like he was ready to tip over. Hermann was about to ask the same when there was a firm one-two knock on the door and they each turned to face it.

“Who in the bloody hell is—”

“I’ve got it,” Jake answered, hopping off the stool in a flash.

“You’ve got it?” Hermann got ready to stand up when he noticed Newton’s hands clinging tight to his arm. He looked down at them, then up at the face that was silently begging him. “What?” he whispered gently, covering Newton’s knuckles. Newton merely shook his head and Hermann leaned in closer. “What is it?”

“Dude.”

“Yes? That’s not…exactly an ans—”

“Sorry. Sorry. I got the wrong number.” They both sat forward and looked to the door, which Jake was conveniently blocking with his body. “Look, you can bug me all you want about it, I’m still not gonna—”

“You’re hopeless. As always.”

“I am not. You gonna move?”

“What, and no kiss?” Then there was a strangled sound as Nate Lambert pushed into the flat.

“I was _joking_ , Jake. Jesus!”

“You can’t joke about that. You give us a peck or you get right the hell out again.”

“Oh my god.” Nate looked to the floor for some sort’ve guidance or aid before he stepped into the living room. He seemed to brighten at Hermann and Newton, standing inside the foyer with his hands on his hips. “Hi, guys. Sorry for the—”

“What _is_ going on, Rangers?” Hermann asked instead, trying to pry some of Newton’s fingers off his arm. It was starting to hurt. “I thought I made it clear that you could come _if_ you gave us ample warning.”

“Warning?” Nate raised an eyebrow, his damnably perfect dimples poking in on the left side as he chewed his cheek and bit back whatever comment he had meant to volley their way. “Cute. Guys, what’ve we got?”

“A bloody headache is what,” Hermann answered, nearly shouting.

“Yeah, well, join the club, Dr. Gottlieb,” Nate answered. He looked at the stool and tugged it closer to him, sitting on it with a back that didn’t look like it was willing to bend for any man. He crossed his arms, tucking his feet in neatly beneath him. “Did we get to the signatures yet, or are we still doing the whole tea and cookies thing?”

“Yeah, so, no kiss. Steals my chair. Right. Bloody beautiful prick,” Jake was muttering as he snatched up the other chair. Nate didn’t turn to him once, even when Jake dramatically placed the extra kitchen stool beside him, craning his neck up to keep his eyes trained on the side of Nate’s head. “You’re lucky you’re handsome or else this wouldn’t work out at all.”

“He’s tired,” Nate said with an almost playful smile. Almost. He was studying Hermann and Newton, taking his field notes in his head. Likely deciding their fates. “You two look rested. More rested. Things have been settling down? You guys nesting?”

“Tolerating,” Hermann and Jake said at the same time and the two looked at each other, one with a snarl and the other with an unnecessarily happy grin.

“Sure. Dr. Geiszler? Your thoughts?”

“Newt,” he answered, and just as Hermann predicted, the usual spiel came out, a forceful banter that unstuck his tongue. “Please. Only my mother calls me ‘Doctor.’ So, you really came here then? It’s _that_ important?”

“It is,” Nate answered while Jake scoffed.

“Oh, right, so he shows up and suddenly it’s like you believe us? What, so I’m chopped liver to you then, eh?”

“See? Needs his nap.” Nate shrugged a shoulder towards Jake, as though offering a joke was the same as offering friendship. It was not received as well as Nate had hoped. He crossed his arms, somehow sitting even more straight-backed than before. “So. What do you know?”

“A lot,” Newton answered, unclenching his fingers around Hermann’s arm and casually tugging his ankle up across his opposite knee. “Where do you want me to start? I was reading up on a fascinating practice for making cheese back in England. You want to start there? Okay so—”

“You know, when you do this, it sounds an awful lot like the Precursors trying  to mask you,” Jake said, jumping up onto the stool now to sit next to Nate. “So, by all means, ramble away, but it just gives us incentive to take you back to the lab and run you through another scan. You’re supposed to go see Sambre later this week, yeah?”

“Tuesday,” Newton said quietly, sinking into himself.

“Right, Tuesday. Just make it tomorrow then. Nothin’ wrong with puttin’ you in the tube and doin’ another scan, right?”

“This is absolutely a threat,” Hermann interjected, slicing his arm through Newton’s field of vision like he meant to deflect some physical attack. “Did you honestly come all the way out here just to _threaten_ us, Ranger?”

“A little,” Jake answered, holding up his index and thumb pinched down to a sliver of air between the two.

“No,” Nate said, knocking his hand off Jake’s shoulder. “We didn’t. We just came for answers.”

“To what?” Hermann growled.

“You know what.”

“Well, we were bloody well going on about it before you came in with your smug face and your _threats_ and—”

“Herm.” Newton touched Hermann’s arm, patting it back out of the air.

“What?!”

“Deep breaths, buddy.”

“Don’t ‘deep breaths’ me. I won’t stand by—”

“You don’t have to. It’s okay.”

Hermann ran his tongue across his teeth as he sank back into the couch cushions, glaring up at Nate. The expression softened, perhaps a little, as Newton threaded their fingers together. Jake was looking up at Nate, nearly slumped over his own knees, resting his chin on his knuckles.

“You do gotta smug face there,” he said quietly. “Beautiful, smug bastard.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Nate answered back. He rolled his eyes, taking a deep breath as though they had all been recommended it. When he was settled in again, he nodded to Newton. “So? Did he tell us what it is or not?”

“He didn’t,” Jake answered, sitting up and squaring his shoulders as well. “Not yet. He’s gonna, though.”

“Oh, is he?” Hermann asked.

“Yeah, am I?” Newton’s smile stretched wide with that pinched part between his brows.

“I would hope,” said Nate with a short shrug. “Look, wrong foot. Right foot. Blame. Whatever you want to say, we’re not actually trying to hurt you guys. Or trap you. Or whatever you want to call it. We’re trying to help. Hell, we’re trying to help the world. Okay? So, again. All I’m asking for is for you to explain what you know.”

Newton waited perhaps a hairsbreadth of a second before he pushed up from the couch and calmly took Hermann’s cold tea cup off the side table. He tilted a hand towards Jake and Nate, asking, “anything for you two?” as he walked around them and into the open kitchen nearby. “No?” Both of them declined and Newton was pouring Hermann’s tea down the sink, running water to rinse it out afterwards. He moved on to the kettle on the stove, grabbed the little metal diffuser, and made sure a new helping of tea leaves were all ready to go as he poured water over the top of it.

The milk was in the fridge and sugar cubes in a small white porcelain bowl on the counter. Newton prepared the cup same as Hermann would have, tinking the spoon off the cup before he wandered back and put it carefully in Hermann’s hand. And he just let them sit there, quietly watching, waiting. More so as he walked back behind the couch and bent down to pick up a cardigan that had been tossed over for Hermann’s desk, missing the rolling chair by about a foot and a half.

“You guys ever watch Jurassic Park?” he finally asked, casually sniffing the cardigan. It had been Hermann who had worn it last and perhaps only Hermann who noticed that he lingered, his nose pressed into the fabric, his eyes shut not to blink but to shut out the world for just a moment and disappear in there. But it was over quickly, and he draped the cardigan back over the couch. “Like, you know, they open a park with dinosaurs and stuff and it’s supposed to be, like, a Disney park and shit with the attractions and all but they engineered T-Rexes and Velociraptors and, you know? Not even with feathers or anything. Cowards."

“Yeah, mate. We’ve all seen it,” Jake answered, motioning a circle with his finger to include all of them. “What’s yer point?”

“Nothing, just, the whole thing was they engineered those dinosaurs, right? They were supposed to be all females so they couldn’t reproduce? They reproduce. ‘Life, uh, finds a way.’” Newton laughed, coming around the other side of the couch again and flopping down next to Hermann, letting their knees touch. “They’re supposed to stay on the island? They get off the island. They're not supposed to kill people. They kill people. They close it down? They open it back up again, too. After everything, right? You got that fourth one and, woop, it all goes to shit again. I mean, put aside the obvious problems with Jurassic World for a second, but, they engineered them as weapons. Specifically they said it’s _not_ actually cloning, it’s bio engineering and they can make any goddamn monster they want. Military dude wanted those velociraptors for the army.”

“Is there a point to this, or are we just going down memory lane for the hell of it?” Jake asked, earning him another swat to the shoulder by his partner.

“I mean, some might even call it a predictive model, just. We shut down the park. They decided to make them bigger and try and kill us,” Newton said, pointing first left and then right. He bumped his shoulder against Hermann, smiling up at him. “Oh my god, though, you remember that movie? Owen? Played by that one guy?”

“Yes, the Star Criminal or whatever?”

“You would,” Newton said with a smile, resting his head against Hermann’s shoulder. He looked over Nate and Jake, beyond them, through them. “He was hot, though. Like, I’d give up my first three children to be with him.”

“We have the first two,” Nate interjected.

Hermann almost felt the violent shock surge through Newton like they had been laid out across the third rail of a subway line. He found Newton’s hand instantly on the cushion beside him and took it before it was clawed away from him.

“What?” Hermann asked quietly, since Newton had slipped back into muteness. He looked down at the back of Newton’s head on his shoulder, watching his eyebrows leap up and then down again.

“That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?” Nate asked, leaning forward. “Dr. Geiszler?”

There was a moment, lingering, standing between them in black and white, where Hermann thought Newton was about to burst from the couch and attack the two gentlemen like a rabid animal. Hermann didn’t even have the strength left to run his thumb over Newton’s knuckles to soothe him, to ground him, to remind him that by God he was here for the man. Through the worst of the worst, he was here, and he would never leave. Hermann recalled Newton curled up in the tub, looking off as he muttered quietly, “Don’t hate me.”

And he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He promised.

But.

“Newton,” Hermann breathed, unsticking the moment of uncertainty, where they were waiting for Newton to either attack or run or explode.

“Yep,” Nate said, sitting back again, nodding. He’d done exactly what he planned, and the outcome seemed to match up to whatever image he had playing out. Hermann wanted to shove the man off his perch and toss the two of them out of his flat. But they were there, steady as can be, and he was simply holding onto Newton’s hand, hoping beyond hope that he was as much an anchor for Newton as he was for Hermann. Down. Down. Down in the deep. “Alright, so. Why don’t you tell us about the tank.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You want some answers? Well. How about some more questions instead, huh? Huh? You like that? (I hope you do, actually, like that.) Thanks for reading!


	8. Should Have Kissed Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a flashback.
> 
> Right after the breach is closed, the Shatterdome celebrates. But Newton doesn't stick around for long and eventually finds his way to whatever glamorous life Shao Industries has promised him. Right, it was Liwen Shao that was giving him everything and not, you know, the Precursors that had infected his head.
> 
> Also, brief mention of alcoholism and disjointed thinking in this one.

Baited breath.

The Jaeger suit comms crackle as communications relay back and forth, distant shouts, final words, all recorded for posterity. The readouts blip and bloom and beg for attention as they look up at the hologram, a staring contest with God himself. Lightning fingers through every extremity as the last reserves of adrenaline pump and push. He wants to scream. He wants to twist. Dude, he wants to shout. He wants to tear his goddamn hair out. Bring it in for the solo round, ya’ll.

Baited breath.

There’s a second presence hovering nearby. It’s a shadow. It’s moth wings up in the rafters. It’s the most familiar sound in the world, right above strumming the opening line with the g-chord and slamming it down into some ungodly riff he’s practiced on the rooftop a thousand times, pressing calluses into fingertips, matching the _keratosis palmaris et plantaris_ within the creases of his fingertips; benign, a little rough, a bystander effect after exposure to too much Blue. One could not hope for less out of an adverse event, honestly. He clenched his fist, callus over callus, line over line, bone over bone, muscle over muscle. Hope. Fucking hope.

Baited-

“The breach has collapsed.”

Newt gets the distinct impression that there should be an exclamation point there, especially from Tendo “Brother, I’ve tried _all_ kinds” Choi, but all it does is release some of the pressure. He claps Tendo on the shoulder, looking up, looking up, looking through. And, dude, of course it’s Herc who rallies. They send out helicopters to go retrieve the heroes, please, God, let there be heroes.

And they wait.

Again.

By  breathing.

Mako’s pod shows up first, spilling fluorescent green to signal the pilots above. She’s alive and, beyond that, she’s awake. She’s talking. That’s like a major fucking success after all the tragedies they’ve seen in the last, hell, twenty-four hours. Small number compared to the world, man. The world. So many people. But, c’mon, focus up and think of these handful of people. This tribe that’s somehow decided to connect and fight together. Newt pumps his hand by his chest for his own victory dance. They accomplished something, honestly. Together, even. Score! Why is nobody goddamn celebrating?

Oh, right, Raleigh.

Right.

Newton moved away, letting people do their people watching thing. He knew the breach had collapsed and he wanted to go right on and do the same thing himself. Somewhere. Like, ideally, somewhere dark and familiar and preferably warm? Dry? Like, all of that sounded amazing. He was even considering just passing out in his tattered leather jacket and stained clothes and all and let Tomorrow Newton Geiszler take care of that. He smiled mechanically at everyone, imaging all the hard work that had gone into prepping those Jaeger pilots for their untimely deaths. Miniscule sacrifices. Roadblocks to the ultimate takeover. Something like revenge tickling angrily in his cerebellum. Or, you know, _not_ that. Christ, he was tired.

“They’ve got visual confirmation,” Tendo announced. Newt turned to look, watching the readouts blur behind his cracked prescription lens. Perfect. He ripped his glasses off his face and squinted down at his sweat and rain and blood-stained shirt as he tried to wipe them off, only making it worse. Everything was worse. “We’ve got sights on the second pod, but….”

“Any sign of life?” Marhsall Hansen asked.

Newt glanced up as he slid his glasses back into place in time to catch not Hercules gripping painfully tight to the back of Tendo’s chair or Tendo shaking his head, running his thumb over the line of prayer beads on his wrist as he counted out his oh so helpful wishes. No, instead, he saw Hermann searching for him. Steady, constant, fucking light of his fucking life, Hermann, who was looking about as beat up as Newt felt. He twitched his smile up higher, brighter, because, buddy, that guy needed to see it more than Newt needed to feel it. Oh but that eye looked sore. Newt walked—staggered, more like—back over and put his hand helpfully on Hermann’s arm.

_We gotta—_

_I know_.

The two didn’t say a single goddamn word, but it was a lie if they didn’t say they felt it. They felt so much. They waited so goddamn long. They gripped each other’s arms so goddamn tightly. Just don’t fucking cry, though, man. Save that for later.

They breathed.

Newt and Hermann blinked when they heard Raleigh’s voice over the chatter. Distant. So fucking exhausted, which was true of all of them, really, but the man had just come up from the literal belly of the beast, so. He deserved…everything, honestly. Newt kept his smile up as Marshall Hansen leaned over and opened all lines of communication.

“This is Marshall Hercules Hansen. The breach is sealed. Stop the clock!”

Eruption.

Chaos has a funny way of constantly barging into their lives. Whether it is the dangerous thrill of pitting giant robots against alien monsters, the messy viscera of kaiju guts on stained surgery gurneys, cryptic memories slipping by and popping up to the forefront during the unsteady, tumultuous Drift of trying to cement a neural handshake out in the goddamn elements of this beautiful goddamn planet they were wrestling back from big alien bastards, or simple humans simply celebrating the determinedly Not End of the World. And it was beautiful. It was painful. It was confusing and fast and smeared over with incorrect memories. A clasp of arms around a man he thought he hated, or he thought he admired, or he thought he loved, or he thought he should murder by choking the life out of him as he slammed him down on a console and promised him the End. The End. This is the End, man.

They should have kissed. Dude, it was so perfect. It was V-J Day on the harbor, soldiers and confetti, black and white. They should have kissed. He’d regret that with all the certainty of a needle skipping over a familiar scar gouged into a record. Missed opportunity. Ruined the rhythm.

Also, the amount of Jack Daniels hidden away in everyone’s bunks was hilariously unprecedented. Nightcaps and therapy-in-a-bottle and “for when we finally beat those sonsabitches” came out, like, instantly. Tendo had a bottle of Arette tequila, the label with “Reposado Suave” in cream and red worn off but the seal never broken. Lots of “fuck it, let’s drink,” moments at his station before he thought better, found hope, and put it back. Now he opened it and shared it with anybody within grabbing distance. Newt would have preferred the Jack, to be honest. Hermann had a better time of refusing.

And there was so much noise! There was so much noise. It was a concert of screams. It was everybody left in the Shatterdome tearing at their vocal chords to shout, “WE MADE IT!” Newt laughed so hard he thought he was going to puke. He pushed through, took arm pats, took hugs, touched anybody that was there because they were there because they were there together because they fucking did it, man, and it was so much noise, man, it was so much. It was terrible. It was painful. It was great. It was pointless. It was coming. It was imminent. It was the best.

Newt clapped another soldier in a muddy uniform as he slipped on towards the exit. There was a sea of just beautifully drab people behind him, but he found the hallway, forcing one slippery foot in front of the other. Familiar routes burned into his muscle memory, his mind wiping out the unnecessary details from point A to point B until he was in the k-science lab. His lab. _Their_ lab.

There was no reason for it. He had planned to go to bed, honestly, and his bunk would have been a better option. But Newt stood in the entrance, rolling up his sleeves as he looked at all their...well, for lack of a better term, junk. Chalkboards with predictive models that were no longer needed. The useless tissue samples on a table with more sealed up and waiting nearby. The slapdash PONS unit he’d managed to put together by some miracle, brought back from the field for either research study or, more likely, to help build a case that he should definitely not be allowed near a PONS unit ever again. The brain.

God, could it really be gone? Could they really be cut off from them? Forever? The hivemind behind a wall so permanent, one could assume they were just dead. Almost the same thing.

“There you are.”

Newt jumped like he’d been caught with his hands down his pants, fumbling around in the ol’ cookie jar. He looked over his shoulder and saw Hermann leaning nearly 90° over the handle of his cane.

“Hey, man.” Newt spun, holding up his arms. “We did it!”

“We did,” Hermann said, straightening a little. He looked so out of breath. He looked so fucking frail. Did Hermann always look this frail? “You left the festivities far earlier than I had assumed you would.”

“Yeah,” Newt answered with a hand wave as he walked back across the lab to the entrance where he reached up and wiped off some of the dried blood on Hermann’s face. “Where’s that stupid handkerchief, man?”

“It isn’t stupid,” Hermann grumbled, jutting his chin out as he reached into his pocket. All sharp angles and mad mutterings. Newt should have kissed him here, too. Maybe. Could have. “If it’s useful, then once could surmise it is hardly stupid.”

Usually Newt would poke him again until they were both shouting at each other. Like it was almost a game to see who had the shortest fuse that day. But he was tired. He was so tired. Oh my god, did he say he was tired? He was. And his head was sort’ve buzzing, probably from Tendo’s tequila and everything, that he only laughed and took the handkerchief from Hermann’s hand to clean up his face.

He couldn’t say when they both ended up on the couch. Nor is it entirely clear when one fell asleep and then the other. Professionally, at first. Platonically, of course. Newt had propped his head up on the armrest and Hermann had crossed his arms and sort’ve sunken into himself, but it wasn’t long before Hermann had kicked up his leg on the cushion and Newt had crawled over looking for warmth and the two sort’ve just held each other, a little island in the inky dark that was a shared nightmare.

Not shared for long.

“I’m just saying, man, there’s no way they’re keeping this place up and running. What’s the point?”

“What’s the point of going into the private sector?”

“Because! Dude, listen, they’re setting me up with an insane molecular biology lab and, like, I’m telling you! Your Jaeger tech know-how is gonna be fucking insane over there!”

“Oh, sure, so you will be caught up in legal red tape for the highest bidder, but you won’t believe in the—”

“No, wait, fuck you, man. ‘Highest bidder.’ Why don’t you want to go where the science is?”

“I thought we closed the breach. Why on earth would you—”

“This is the best fucking deal we’ve been offered! This place is an elephant graveyard, dude. You wanna talk about—”

“I wanted to talk, yes! But you signed a contract without—”

“Oh, and suddenly I have to run everything by you first for it to—”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t _do_ that. You can’t—”

“ _You_ can’t keep telling me—”

And the shouting continued until it didn’t. Until one of them, both of them, said _something_ that pushed the other man away. And that happened, of course, all the time, of course. But then they would go to their respective sides of the lab, count to ten, and come back at it again. Except this time there was a countdown over their heads that didn’t restart in the morning. It ended with a packed bag and promises to keep in touch and a plane ride leaving at 7:15 pm. That was it.

Didn’t even ask him to come to the airport to say “so long.” Didn’t even text him when the plane landed. Should have kissed him. Except that thought got buried too and it was new offices, new teams, techs reporting to _Newt_ for some reason, working in programs with fingers that were so sure of where they wanted to go, a lonely apartment, quick trips out into the city until a favored bar was discovered, until wine became the second highest expense in the household behind designer jackets and shirts and ties and a fucking _awesome_ ring, shut up, we need it to look cool, man. We look so fucking cool. We are so fucking cool. We are so fucking tired. We are so fucking confused. We are so fucking lonely. We are so fucking needy. We are so fucking.

Alice.

Wine.

Work.

Wing it, baby, we’re going to get these drones up like you wouldn’t believe. This was good work. And they were ahead of schedule! Hermann would be so jealous. Honestly should text him just to show off. Remind him you’re alive, man, you know?

Newt didn’t, of course. He didn’t even send an email or, better yet, a handwritten letter. God, those letters. Those were love letters if they were anything, heart and soul, igniting passions in science that couldn’t be tempered, entwining two minds that were basically made for each other. Awful. Embarrassing. If they weren’t stuck in a crate back with the stuff he’d abandoned at the Shatterdome, Newt would have burned them.

Maybe it was good that he didn’t. Couldn’t. Just forget they existed.

Forget a lot of things, actually. And chalk that up to work, of course. And, yeah, maybe he should have cut back on the wine, but it tempered this…this _something_ itching at the back of his head.

“I’m doing great work, man,” he would say to nobody at the bar, babbling in English because he was tired and he didn’t want to have to practice Chinese right now, man, just let him have his break. Liwen Shao wasn’t around—not that he knew. Of course he didn’t know he was being tailed. No, right now, he was off the clock. He had set his jacket down on the stool next to him, saving a seat for somebody who wasn’t even there, who he wasn’t aware he was waiting for. Moth wings flickering on the edge. Hands reaching on the edge. Little reminders of, like, okay, tomorrow? There’s that meeting at 8 in 121-C-G with Xu, and then test run of the neural distribution load with those guys over in Recal, and don’t forget to pick up your suits from Lindy over on _the blood samples looked positive but we won’t know until gestation after you check with ---- stop STOP drown it drown him one more claw you want it you want it so badly_ and then maybe have some personal time with Alice. He smiled, turning his glass back and forth in his hand. Neon green and yellow glinted from above the bar. Hologram babes played in empty booths. Other businessmen did shots nearby and a faceless bartender offered to refill his glass, but he declined.

“You know what? It’s late.” His face was rosy; one might assume it was because he was practically cartwheeling his way towards alcoholism. There was a time that didn’t seem so very probable. He pushed money across the bar top with a well-practiced smile. “Fuck it, dude. Alice needs me.”

He was so sure. He was so sure he was doing what he needed to do. He was helping pilots. He was going to save the goddamn world. He met with ----. Negative results, but not a negative outlook. Nope. Things were coming out on top. Things were great.

The End.

Big. Goddamn. Rockstar.

So why did it hurt so much when Hermann showed up? Not because he had forgotten about him, but maybe that the memories had been put aside like a certain crate back at a certain Shatterdome, collecting dust. It was hard to drag them up to the surface, some net pushing his feelings down. So annoying. Here he was to take away from the spotlight with some recipe for Kaiju Blue rocket fuel? That’s insane, Hermann! That’s…kinda cool, Hermann. No! Insane! Stupid. Stay on track. Second specimen wasn’t viable, but we’re so close, you mongrel. Even with the limited tech, it’s just there. Making strides in cloning these pathetic creatures couldn’t dream of. Seal the connection. Lots of late nights in the lab. So close. The programming is going strong and you think the last test with the guys from Recal was honestly really promising.

So close.

Slamming him down on the table, hands wrapped tight around his neck. Couldn’t get any closer than that. And the whispering wasn’t whispering, it was shouting, it was forefront and center. Oh god, he should have known. He should have….

“I’m sorry, Hermann,” he answered, voice cracking as he tried to convince his hands to let go, please, please let go, don’t hurt him, please? God, having to beg his own body because he wasn’t in the pilot seat anymore. Who was running simulations and making formulas to rescue _him_ , huh? Hermann’s thumb twitching apologetically over Newt’s knuckles. He should have kissed him. He could cry, like, seriously, man. Newt looked down at him, hoping Hermann understood. “They’re in my head.”

Down.

Down.

Down she goes.

Down he goes.

Down they all go.

Down with them.

Down with us.

Don’t go.

Don’t.

No.

I.

\---

“Newt?”

His head lolled against the back of the chair of its own accord, his tongue so thick he thought he was choking on it. The dampeners had helped isolate the signature that was unequivocally Newton, but it had the adverse effect of temporary paralysis and a bit of a punch to his nervous system. One could almost reminisce fondly of being jumped by a couple of peers two times his senior outside primary school. If not for the restraint he’d buckled around his midsection, Hermann would have slid clean out of the chair. He blinked back blearily, shaking from the effort of simply breathing.

“Newt,” Hermann tried again, consonants and vowels coming together with a modicum of cohesion.

Hermann fumbled to undo the strap, distantly aware that someone, somewhere, was shouting. It wasn’t himself; he was resolutely silent, focusing on unscrewing the nerves that had tightened his jaw so tightly that he was afraid he might break his own teeth. He was breathing, of course, because he had to. And when the strap clicked open, he slipped out of the chair, falling immediately to the hard concrete floor. A hand was on his back and he jumped, imagining the clawed appendages he had just dreamed about.

Another doctor was called as the Ranger helped him up, trying to convince him to step out of the cell.

“No. No!” Hermann shoved weakly against the man as he focused on the chair, clawing his way around to see him from the front. “Newton. Newt, I know you can hear me.”

The poor man was seizing, bucking hard against the restraints. The shout had come from him, a quick exposition of “NO!” before he began to rock violently. Newton slammed his head back against the stiff metal chair that was his immediate prison and stretched his neck taught, screaming.

“Newt!”

A slap would have had the same outcome, perhaps. Hermann reached when Newton suddenly slumped forward against the restraints. He was practically a ragdoll then.

It was so terribly quiet in the cell. Ragged breaths, yes, but the quiet of two gentlemen waiting to see what the other bastard might do. Hermann let Jake steady him for a moment before he pushed his way over and knelt in front of the chair.

“Newt,” he said again, cupping the poor man’s face. “Newt, I swear to God, I’ll—”

“Nn. Mmm num…numbers, “he answered quietly.

“What?”

As Hermann ran his hands across Newton’s face, he pushed his head up to look at him. Hermann wanted to know, checking for that dead-eyed stare of the Precursors or the fake smile they wore so well or the bloody awful charm and venom. But he saw Newton, teary-eyed and exhausted. And maybe it was a trick, but it was terribly convincing if it was. Hermann shook off the memories calling to him, distant flashes from the Drift. He was sure. He was sure because he had to be. And when Newton pushed his cheek into Hermann’s hand like it was the first kind encounter he’d ever had, Hermann finally let out a breath of air like he had been drowning.

“Not God,” Newton croaked, closing his eyes for a moment before he opened them again. He was afraid to go into the dark. That seemed perfectly acceptable, considering what had been holding onto him in the Drift. “Numbers.”

“Numbers?” Hermann didn’t mean to scowl, but his face softened and nodded after a time. “Yes, of course. Of course.”

“Everything…guh. Hurts. Herm. Oh god,” he whispered before he turned his cheek into Hermann’s palm and rested there. Not exactly a kiss, but a promise of tenderness.

“We’ll get you out of here. I promise.” He pushed back Newton’s hair, ignoring every damnable ache and pain in his own body. Ignoring Dr. Sambre entering the room followed by the three techs they’d managed to salvage in the area, ready to roll Hermann to the med bay to check his vitals. Hermann would curse them out shortly, demand they check Newton’s scans first, tend to his wounds, help him god _damnit_. But not yet. “Sod it. I’ll even promise on numbers if you like.”

Newton laughed against Hermann’s palm and that felt like just about the greatest feeling in the world. Like it would be alright.

\---

There was a lot that Newton still couldn’t remember. So many things were overwritten, which was of course against his will, so it was not exactly like he could be blamed. The Rangers wanted to place the blame anyways. Hermann, for his part, couldn’t. Wouldn’t, was more accurate. He had only hoped that after the tumultuous ride through a Precursor-tainted Drift that it was all over. He had told himself that it was over. It would be alright. But as he watched Newton slowly sit up and straighten his back, he knew. It was not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some part of me knows I'll probably do a longer fic where we go into how, exactly, Hermann freed Newton. Or! It gets tossed into this one because I'm very much a "rough outline and then plod ahead" sort've writer. So. We'll see! Hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading this far!


	9. Yi, Er, San

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It seems that Newton had been very busy in Russia. Not only working on drones for Liwen Shao, but a pet project on the side. And he would very much like to remind you that it was Dr. Frankenstein and the Monster. You know?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....
> 
> WHAT'S IN THE TAAAAANK?

“I had help,” Newton answered, biting down on the tip of his tongue as he looked beyond them, likely sorting through his own memories. “I don’t…I don’t have a name. I wish I did. Believe me or not, I guess. Just.”

Jake looked over at Nate and they shared a silent conversation with microscopic facial twitches. Observation alone, one could say they hardly looked at each other. And yet they knew. Whatever was being said, they _knew_. When Jake twitched his left pinky, Nate unconsciously did the same. When Nate tilted his head towards the kitchen, Jake nodded the same way. That was as clear evidence for a neural bond caused by multiple Drifts as anything else. Hermann just wished he could read them as easily as they read each other. It was not the first time he wished for some fantasy version of telepathy in hopes of reading others with perfect clarity, damn the likely psychosis and alienation of reading everyone’s private thoughts. Transparency was the closest truth he could think of. It was the allure of the Drift. Plain as day. If Hermann couldn’t pry open the Rangers’ minds and see their memories, then he could dream of doing it with the man beside him, because, of course, at this point he had. He could dig like some excavator through the muddy memories left in Newton’s head and sort out truth from falsehoods. Hermann sneered, projecting his thoughts as he had them. The man had no poker face to speak of. He thought. He expressed. He yearned to know what he had to do next to protect Newton.

“You needed parts,” Nate finally said, looking away from Jake. “Right? Obviously you had some because of the kaiju matter found in Shao’s drones. _How_ you got that much is—”

“Cloning,” Newton answered simply. He rubbed his tongue into the groove of a molar, thinking back. “That’s how they did it. That’s how they…I guess they showed me how. I mean, it was imperfect compared to what they have on the other side. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was…hell, it was sort’ve a miracle.”

While Newton smiled, Jake and Nate sat straighter, each crossing their arms like a deliberate neural program running over their motor skills. Jake shrugged, breaking the synchronization, and shook his head to clear it.

“What can you tell us?” Nate asked. “You needed raw material, right? I’m only guessing.”

Newton nodded, clacking his teeth together once. Twice. Thrice. Hermann took his hand and squeezed it before he chomped his molars together a fourth time.

“Right,” Newton answered, startled out of his compulsive behavior. He glanced down at Hermann’s hand and smiled, squeezing back.

“Right,” Nate repeated with a short nod. He leaned forward, trying to coax the answers out. “And—”

“It wasn’t supposed to be progeny or anything.” Newton’s voice pitched higher, belying his genial expression. That terrible short “fuse” that he liked to talk about back in their k-science days. Hermann often got baited into arguments, but Newton was the one to snap far too quickly. “Okay? I mean, that’s sort’ve a sick joke right there if you—”

“But it is,” Nate cut in. “Right?”

Newton closed his eyes again, steadying himself. He pushed out a shaky breath before he said, “No. Not like how you—”

“You’re still on our side, eh?” Jake asked, leaning forward on his stool now as well. The effect was a deliberate wall, boxing the two in against the couch. Hermann closed the distance between his shoulder and Newton’s shoulder. Their own protective wall, as it were. “You’re gonna help us, right? Cause you’re not a spy. Least, that’s what your boyfriend there thinks.”

“I beg your _pardon_ , Ranger P—”

“Jake,” Nate cut in quietly, rolling his eyes through the gentle chiding. Jake Pentecost didn’t deserve a _gentle_ chiding.

“You’re a dick,” Newton said with a short laugh. Another squeeze of Hermann’s hand. Morse code contact that relayed the simple exclamation of S.O.S.

“What?” Jake stood up from the stool, almost tipping it over onto its side. “He made a Frankenstein, right?”

“Dude. Jesus. Frankenstein was the doctor,” Newton said and in the same breath, Hermann answered, “You’re referring to Adam.”

“Oh fuck all with your semantics.” Jake spun, swatting Nate’s hand away from his arm as he came around and wagged his finger to the two on the sofa. “No. This is about the little kaiju fucker we’re tracking and—”

“He got out?” Newton almost pushed up to his feet as well, but he was partially wedged in under Hermann’s elbow. A small restraint at best. One to be easily overpowered if one wanted to. Newton did not want to.

“Oh, so it’s a ‘he’ now?” Jake looked like he had been given a gift, his eyes sparkling with a dangerous energy. Newton shrank back by increments, swallowing his retort. That didn’t bode well, to say the least. Jake nodded, obviously very proud of himself. “I mean, makes sense. The, what were we calling it? The tank you got over in Russia was, what?” He snapped his finger at Nate, hoping for him to supplement the missing data.

Nate sighed. He looked, well, not angry. Or even displeased. Weary, yes, but there was a certain crinkle in his eyes that said “disappointed.” It didn’t matter who you were, that was always worse.

\---

Always worse. Always worse than that. Even from a fucking angel faced punk.

Well, maybe you’re disappointed too. Disappointed about getting sucked into experiments unwittingly preformed on yourself. And not just experiments, too, right? Penance. Reminders. Silent cries for help, you fucking child, you idiot, you—

The first two didn’t make it. They had been close. Remember? Remember, God, what was their name? Because you couldn’t get a facility like that up and running on your own, right? You couldn’t really bioengineer your little…don’t call it an offspring, that’s so wrong. But alone? No, right? Because you remember, like, a shadow. Something. There were lots of shadows. There were lots of moth wings. There were lots of eyes. Needles. Scalpels. Protein baths and molecular engineering to bioengineer a bonding agent between the very alien tissue to the very human tissue and specimen retrievals for both parties. One was easy. Black market sales with the extra cash you pulled out of your accounts and set aside over time, biding. Waiting. The other was less easy. Mechanical, of course, but. You were trying something and it’s not like you were really going to _be_ the mad scientist and harvest corpses or something. Jesus, okay, that one was the most embarrassing. That one just gets buried on principle alone. That one….

You’re so sure somebody was there to help. You remember. Well, okay, no. You don’t. You can’t trust memories from the third grade, let alone anything while you were wiped out by the Precursors. Did you make them up? Did _they_ make them up? Pretty easy to convince someone when you don’t let them eat or sleep. Something like annoyance when the body just dropped. Or when it reacted violently to that serum. Or when it cried. Again. Although there was something like entertainment or joy from that. Something.

Days at a time of pushing through exhaustion and hunger and cracking “The Code” to get…what was their name, though? You look and all you hear is ----.

Are you mad you can’t remember? Or just disappointed.

\---

“Dr. Geiszler, w—”

“Newt.” His voice was so quiet when he said it, until he cleared his throat and put on a brave face, jutting out his chin. Hermann glanced over and thought he had seen that look in a mirror. Was he proud that some of Hermann’s traits bled over to Newton as well? Unimaginably, yes, but now was not the time. “Please.”

Nate just nodded and held up a hand, as though to apologize for his slip up. “Right. So, the facility was basically self-sufficient to, what, keep it off the grid?”

“Shao was tailing me,” Newton answered through his teeth. He looked down at his knees. “Not that _I_ knew that, but, then, I wasn’t supposed to, was I?”

“Sure, but you know…well, at least, it seems that you remember some of it. Your reaction to the first specimens—”

“Hey, you were the one insinuating they were my children, like, a second ago.”

Newton was tossing his hands in the air, talking animatedly and pushing at his sleeves without thinking. Hermann watched him steadily, trying to keep his breathing even and his heart rate regulated. When one of Newton’s hands swung close, he grabbed it and entwined their fingers. Newton turned his attention to Hermann, baring wide eyes. Frantic eyes. Kaiju Blue eyes.

“They’re…Herm,” he whispered, words failing him again.

Micro expressions. Drift compatible. There was something there. Hermann just had to read it.

“Either way,” Nate said pointedly, drawing their attention back. “I’m assuming because you weren’t there to check up on it and this ‘help’ you claim to have also abandoned the site because one of your generators failed. So, yes. Whatever you want to call it has escaped.”

“And that’s what you’re reading off the coast of Australia?” Hermann asked, trying to fit the pieces together.

“Think so, yeah,” Jake answered, picking up the stool and taking it back with him to the kitchen island. “Look, you already said it. One, right? It doesn’t have the same signatures. And two, it’s smaller. I’m loathe to say it’s more adaptable because the geezer there—”

“Fuck you, dude! Fuck you,” Newton shouted, jabbing his finger in Jake’s direction. Hermann tried to pull his arm back down to his lap, spluttering some retort that was lost in the noise. “You—”

“And you cloned a monster,” Jake shouted, held back when Nate kicked away from his stool and grabbed Jake’s shoulders. “Don’t, Nate. Some point he’s gotta—”

“Jake.” Nate leaned in close and muttered something through his teeth, pointing at the floor and motioning towards the entrance. Jake scowled, ready to argue, keeping his ear close to Nate’s whispered plea. Command. Either way. Eventually the tension went out of his shoulders and he rolled his eyes, ticking his mouth up in a half-repressed snarl. “Okay? It’s our best shot.”

“Yeah,” Jake answered and jerked his arm loose. “You get this one. Only cause you’re cute, mate.”

Nate ignored him with the reserves of a man who had learned to store a lot of patience in these tiny times of need. He flattened his hands, a show of good faith, as it were. When he turned back to the stool, he touched it before standing with a military-straight back in front of them.

“Come with us to Australia and help us recover your…what would you like me to call it?”

“God damnit, dude.” Newton pinched his mouth together, shaking his head as more a tremble than an answer. “San. We called it San.”

“Son?” Jake asked with an ugly scoff.

“No, Jesus. _San_. Three, you willfully ignorant prick. It’s the third one. Yi. Er. San. Listen, do I have to talk to you? Why _am_ I talking to you? Why—”

“Okay!” Nate raised his voice to shut them all up again. “Look. So far, it hasn’t caused any destruction to any of the vessels in the area. No buildings, property, what have you. The only thing it did when it got out of that tank you had it in was leave. Which, c’mon, let’s be thankful for that. Anyways. People don’t know about it. Him. Whatever. We have time to collect him and then we can decide what we need to do.”

“You guys ransack my facility?” Newton asked, jerking forward.

“Yours?”

“Or. Whatever. Just, did you disturb it yet or—”

“Not yet. But we have it locked down.”

Newton’s leg was bouncing fast as he listened, nodding along. Perhaps not nodding along to _their_ conversation, but one he was having internally. Hermann watched him intently, torn between giving Nate his attention as both a courtesy and a necessity and ensuring Newton did not simply combust.

“When do we depart?” Hermann asked in place of Newton.

“We can get you on a jet over to Sydney in thirty minutes.”

“Doesn’t give us much time to pack,” Hermann stated, attempting to lighten the mood in a way Newton might have done. Who, instead of laughing, was bouncing his leg harder and chewing on his fingernail.

“We’ll make accommodations, Doctor.”

“May we have a moment to discuss this?” Hermann did not attempt to stop Newton’s apparent stimuli, instead placing both hands on the top of his cane and tucking it under his chin. “Alone?”

Jake was sitting quietly at the kitchen island, resting his head in his hands, looking like he was hardly part of the conversation at all. But of course, he had been listening. Formulating his own plans, most likely. His own biases and judgements. He stood up and headed for the door without further prompting. That was enough confirmation for Nate Lambert to nod curtly and join him back in the hallway. Everyone there knew they were hardly “alone.” That they were clearly being monitored across the alley. But the illusion of privacy was enough that Hermann relaxed when he heard the door shut.

“Newt, I—”

Newton immediately turned and grabbed Hermann’s lapels, tugging his face close so that their noses almost touched.

“I swear to God, Herm, I didn’t mean for all of this. Please. Please don’t—”

“I don’t,” Hermann answered quickly, blinking fast as he squashed down the fear that Newton’s hands would migrate from his lapel to his neck, a flash of panic that he did not act upon. He swallowed reflexively, tilting his forehead forward to press against Newton’s, and was relieved, if a touch guilty at his relief, to feel a tentative kiss. He returned the gesture, his eyes closed when he pulled back to ask, “What are we going to do?”

“We. We have to go after it. Right?” Newton pulled back only to drop his head onto Hermann’s shoulder and curl up beside him. “We’ve gotta…I don’t want to say rescue. Because. I’m not…I don’t want to feel…responsible for it. Not. I am responsible. But it’s not, like, my _kid_. Right?”

“I understand.”

“I love you, dude.”

Hermann chuckled, rubbing Newton’s shoulder before planting his lips on the crown of his head. He supposed they needed to go tell the Rangers they were accepting the offer to go hunt down… _whatever_ Newton had created back in Russia, but he was afraid to disturb the quiet of the moment. He sighed, ready to stand, when Newton put his hand on Hermann’s chest and looked up.

“I love you,” he said again with a crinkled brow.

Hermann blinked. He had heard him the first time, thought that was perfectly alright, and tilted his head to show his confusion. Newton’s chin twitched, registering Hermann’s face in piecemeal—his chin, his nose, his ears, his eyes, his lips. Hermann watched him, a worrying spike digging through his guts as he was afraid he had done something wrong. And as he got more confused, more worried, Newton’s face bloomed to anger, close to shouting something, when he closed his eyes and clacked his teeth together.

“Oh my god,” Newton whispered.

“What? What have I—”

Newton sat himself up, his back to Hermann as he tugged at his collar and his sleeves, smoothing his shirts down. Hermann reached for him, flattening his palm on Newton’s back, and was surprised when the man flinched at the contact.

“You wanna go get, like, toiletries and shit? Medications and all that?” Newton asked without looking up, but this didn’t feel right. Hermann ran his hand up Newton’s back, a sting in his chest when Newton rolled his shoulder away. “I can tell them we’ll be ready to go in—”

Hermann grabbed a fistful of Newton’s shirt and tugged him back to his lap, catching his head before it slammed into Hermann’s thigh. He leaned over and kissed him at the awkward angle, accepting that they were perpendicular and that while it was not nearly as perfect a line up as either of them would have liked, it was a match. It was a union. He pushed his fingers through Newton’s hair, mussing it into disheveled angles. So much easier without the glasses, surely, even if the reasoning for their absence was another tiny blow. He pulled back with a gasp, forcing his eyes open to see Newton. Study. Watch him. Protect him. Newton, who was soft and melting with a confused and happy smile on his face.

“I love you, you insipid fool,” Hermann answered and was very glad to see Newton’s smile become wider, more stable. “I’m terribly sorry I don’t tell you more often.”

“Dude, shut up,” Newton said quietly, biting his lip. His cheeks were slightly flushed. He looked up at last, painfully blue eyes through dark lashes. So damnably lovely. “I’m sorry. I—”

“You shut up,” Hermann interjected. He tilted his head again, trying very hard not to look worried. “What are we going to find in Australia?”

Newton closed his eyes and relaxed in Hermann’s lap. Not relaxing, truly. Forcing himself to be still was more accurate. He tried to smile, of course. Newton always hid behind a smile when he could do nothing else. Hermann had come to learn a library worth of grins and smiles and laughs and their various interpretations in regard to Newton Geiszler. And this one said, “I don’t want to talk about it, but I know I can’t hide from it and I hate that it would change anything between us because I believe this to be solely my fault and the guilt is killing me. _Dude_.” Hermann stroked Newton’s temple with his thumb anyways.

“You didn’t hear?” Newton asked, chuckling darkly. Distantly. “We’re gonna find my son.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel that Newton throws out "I love you" like I do. Not that it isn't special, but that it should be said more often so that the people around you know it. And that Hermann rarely, if ever, says it, because it just isn't part of his usual vocabulary. So, I definitely wanted that to come about. And. It. Did!
> 
> Later edit: I updated it so that San's tank is in Russia and not China, because that's just what we're doing now. Also because I mentioned Russia way more later, so this is an easier fix. Huzzah!


	10. Xanax Helped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have nine hours between Tokyo and Australia, where they should finally run into Newton's "project." While they were hoping to discuss the importance of finding San, Newton just really wants to talk about Hermann's cooking. Something. Anything. Flying sucks, dude!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Newton flies the exact same why I fly...in a sweaty panic.
> 
> Also, we just needed a tiny amount of some soft goodness, so, you're getting slightly distracted Newton and Hermann, damnit! Kiss!

It was a confusing mix of emotions that saddled uncomfortably on their shoulders while boarding the private jet that would fly them over to Australia. Newton had taken the seat directly next to Hermann, who was idly looking out the window beside him as he rubbed Newton’s bouncing leg. It didn’t stop him, of course. Hermann did not want to impede him in either case, but it was a form of care and comfort that he could provide. And, beyond that, it was a distraction from having Rangers Lambert and Pentecost seated across from them. Eye contact was generally not a favorite of his in general, but now this was aiming for bloody torture.

“So, they said we should be in Sydney in nine hours,” said Nate, poking at a tablet. “Then we’ll take a helicopter over to—”

“We’re taking a helicopter?” Newt had been slumped as low as he was allowed in the chair without brushing his knee caps with Nate. He sat up and took Hermann’s hand. He even smiled at him, but Hermann was distracted with the outside world and with Jake staring that he couldn’t determine the validity of Newton’s smile.

“Yes. There’s a naval base near the ‘anomaly’ that—”

“Dude, we already said, right?”

Nate tilted his head. “Did you really want me to call it San like—”

Newt sat forward, punching the air with his fist as he said, “We’re calling it Big Fucking Surprise.”

“No. I’m not calling it that.”

“BFS. Good ol’ Buffs.”

“No,” Nate said again, shaking his head.

“Daddy’s Little Monster. We’ll put it in a Harlequin mask.”

“I’m going to have to ask you stop.”

Newt opened his mouth, closing it up again when he felt Hermann’s grip tighten on his hand. He glanced down, the smile faltering. Another perfect little mask knocked askew. Not entirely Hermann’s intention, of course, but truths were hard won and Newton needed to know he didn’t have to put on a happy face for their benefit. Only if it was what he wanted. Newton relaxed, leaning towards Hermann’s seat and took a deep breath.

“San,” Newt said softly. “Yeah. I mean, better than ‘anomaly,’ right?”

“Better than B.F.S,” Jake muttered, leaning heavily on his arm rest and invading Nate’s space.

“Is it though?” Newton asked with a squint.

“It ain’t, but we’re gonna pretend like it is,” Jake answered with a cocky half-grin.

Hermann, for his part, continued to look out the window. He glanced back occasionally to be sure that Jake and Nate knew he was listening, but he watched the tarmac skate away beneath the wing of the jet as they picked up towards the sky. He enjoyed the thrilling turn of his stomach, the velocity with which they spirited themselves up towards the cloud line and beyond that. He had always dreamed of being a pilot but had quickly learned he was grossly unqualified to pass rudimentary physical examinations, let alone anything for the air force or, better yet, the Jaeger program. Hermann sighed, turning his attention to Newt when he felt his leg pumping a little faster during take-off. His palm was decidedly sweaty. Hermann forgot that while Newton also thought the Jaeger program would have been a thrilling avenue of employment in his youth, the man had a slight phobia when it came to flying.

“Right, so, after we arrive at the naval base, we can check their readings of, uh, _San_ ,” said Nate, still adamant about trudging through the unnecessary debrief. “Then we can ascertain—”

“Are we killing it or are we collecting it?” Jake asked, looking over at Nate.

“Jake,” Nate muttered.

“What? It’s important to get delineations, mate. Don’t—”

“Oh my god,” Nate muttered, tilting his head back and showing some of that exasperation he had managed to keep in check. “Can we just—”

“Gentlemen.” Hermann licked his bottom lip, staring hard at Jake and then Nate to be absolutely sure he was heard. “It’s a nine hour flight, correct?”

“Yes,” said Nate.

“Yeah,” said Jake.

“So I do believe we have plenty of time before we arrive in Sydney, let alone the naval base where we will be tracking this….” He glanced over at Newton, who was once again jiggling his leg fast, breathing hard against the hand that was casually holding up his chin. Newton wasn’t looking directly at any of them, staring through as his memories tumbled on to somewhere else. “San, or however we’re addressing it. We have time. Could we not…have a rest for the duration?”

Jake bobbed his head and looked around. They had been somewhat lucky to get the jet in the first place, so shortly after the disaster of the megakaiju attack. Resources had been thin for everyone in the last couple of years, and while global military spending wasn’t _exactly_ tied in with the PPDC, they had managed to snag a few items in the chaos. It helped that Nate played nice—begged is a less kinder way to put it—while Jake used some of his influence to get, say, a private jet that belonged to, of all things, a plastic doll mogul. Still, it worked in their favor, even if it meant quad seats like the ones they were at now where they could all stare at each other like aggressive primates. Hermann, again, found himself looking out the window as a distraction.

“Need my beauty sleep before we see Jules again anyhow,” he said as he undid his seat buckle and slipped out of the little four quad seat set, tapping Nate’s shoulder twice as he stepped away to another set of chairs kitty-corner to them. Nate watched him, but turned his attention back to Newton and Hermann, almost keeping his eye-roll in check.

“I’ll let you rest,” Nate said, closing the leather folder over his tablet, “but we’re looking to you two specifically because you’re our leading experts on kaiju.”

“Hybrid,” Newton pointed out. He still looked very lost and a shade paler than usual, but his answer meant he was somewhat tethered to the moment.

“Well. Yes. The size of your, uh, ‘San’ indicates we could take it out with Scrapper if we really wanted to, which would be easier to transport than any of our other Jaegers. Don’t tell Jake I said that. Him and Amara can be…. Either way. That’s burning resources we’re still trying to justify, doctors.”

“Newt.”

“Right.” Nate sighed, sitting back in the chair. “Newt. And, uh, Hermann?”

“Dr. Gottlieb,” he answered in a dry voice.

Herman could easily poke Newton with the jibe that, in the presence of others, they should very well use the titles they’ve earned and at the very least refrain from truncated nicknames. Newton had _six_ PhDs, the maniac. But he didn’t have the heart to start an argument, even a fake one such as that.

“Right.” Nate could tell he wasn’t going to get the debrief and answers he wanted. Not then, at least. A tighter time frame and interrogation once they landed might do the trick, but it was easy to see that the Ranger was also looking sallow and pale. Had any of them slept properly in days? Weeks? “Well, enjoy the flight, gentlemen.”

“Doctors,” Hermann and Newton said at the same time, simply because it was too easy not to.

That was it. Nate simply thinned the line of his mouth in an attempt at a smile as he unbuckled his seat belt and joined Jake over in the other set of chairs. Jake immediately took Nate’s hand, like he had been waiting for the moment to pounce and drew it up to his chest as he turned and fell back asleep. Nate looked nonplussed, letting his hand be stolen while he flipped open his tablet again and started poking at it. One might assume he was answering important emails, but Hermann recognized the rhythm of a man playing some sugar-coated nonsense match-game. It was almost endearing if the two had not been so annoyingly abrasive.

“Man, fuck those guys, Herms,” Newton muttered, kicking his foot up onto the seat across from him where Nate had just been. A jumble of turbulence rocked them left and right and Newton immediately dropped his feet again, clinging tightly to the armrests. “Fuck,” he spat out, a short angry whisper.

Hermann didn’t mind the turbulence. He felt an odd turn his stomach, but it was hardly concerning. But seeing Newton’s panic reminded him that the man used to be on several anti-anxiety medications back during their tenure at the PPDC and it was highly unlikely that the Precursors were keeping his medications regimented. He supposed getting the Precursors _out_ of his head had been a more pressing priority and they had not discussed him returning to his perfectly normal treatments. How they might need to be updated to accommodate the trauma of the last ten years. A multitude of reasons, prescriptions, trials and errors. Newton had been putting on a good show until the jet jumbled uncomfortably. Now, his eyes squeezed shut.

“You’re okay you’re okay you’re okay you’re okay,” he muttered quickly, his leg bouncing faster against the floor. “You’re okay you’re okay you’re okay you’re—”

“Newton?” Hermann placed his hand atop Newton’s without trying to pry it loose from the armrest beside him. “You will be fine. We’ve been on airplanes before.”

“Not helping, dude,” Newton said with one of his cocky half-grins. “You know what helped with those? Xanax. Xanax helped. Oh, I should’ve had a drink or something before we boarded.”

“I might have some Benadryl in with my medications?” Hermann offered, only to have Newton shake his head violently. He turned his palm up and grabbed Hermann’s hand, squeezing uncomfortably hard. Hermann wiggled his fingers and decided that he could do without circulation for an hour or so before he’d have to ask for his hand back.

“No. Dude, that makes me sleepy and I feel like I’m getting dragged down. Just.” Newton ground his teeth together and sat back, staring up at the ceiling. “Talk to me, Herms. Hell, monologue, man, I don’t fucking care.”

“About what?” Hermann knew the question would irk him, but he wanted to be sure he was helping as best he could. Because the mathematics of aerodynamics was easily on his mind and figured discussing it would not alleviate Newton’s stress.

“Anything. Anything. You, uh. So, you cook? Like?” Newton rolled his free hand before he slapped it back down again and white-knuckled the arm rest. “That’s new?”

Hermann laughed lightheartedly. He shifted his weight so that he could lean on Newton, resting his head on the other man’s shoulder.

“Hardly,” he said.

Newton laughed too, and Hermann could hear it rattle around in Newton’s chest. The jet shuddered unpleasantly. When it settled, he could focus on Newton’s heartbeat, the tattoo frenetic with nervous energy. Hermann smiled as he went on and on about first learning by watching his mother and sisters cook when he was young. Lars Gottlieb had been adamant that the boy was not going to learn some feminine trade, that it was as pointless as trying to get him into sports he did not enjoy and eventually could not participate in anyways. While early experiments in rogue cooking had been disastrous, he had found he quite enjoyed precuring recipes and the science of mixing different ingredients. Baking bread, for an example, required but four simple ingredients of flour, water, salt, and yeast. But the temperature, the time, the mechanics of it would yield different results and Hermann, who was a stickler for the scientific method, would redo and replicate and rework recipes as he found them. He had a few lovingly worn-down notebooks in his collection of his findings.

“Okay, hold the fuck up, though. Because you never did that back at the Shatterdome,” said Newton, relaxing enough that their hands were merely entwined and not locked down by a death grip. He didn’t stop vibrating. His leg was still bouncing like that Energizer Rodent was powering his muscles. “Because we ate in the caf, like, all the damn time. And we always got take out!”

“Yes, and where was I supposed to get ingredients while we were trying to prevent the end of the world?” Hermann asked snidely. “Where was I going to cook said ingredients?”

“Oh, dude. We coulda built a makeshift kitchen in the lab, like—”

“Yes, and then I’d be afraid we’d end up trying to sear a few kaiju steaks on a cast iron pan.”

“Could you even imagine what that would taste like?”

“The smell, remember.”

“The smell!” Newton laughed hard, patting Hermann’s arm. “We’re gonna be haunted by stink forever.”

“I would hope not,” Hermann said, nodding when he noticed Nate looking back over at them. “I would hope the opportunity to refresh that sensory memory did not present itself in real world applications.”

“Yeah.” Newton’s laughter tapered off, humming to an awkward stall. “Real world. Hey. I don’t want them to, like, capture it and keep it alive to study it.”

“Study what?” Hermann asked before he was able to make the connection. “Oh, S—”

“I know. I know. I should be, like. I’d be all over it, man! I’d be right there, practically begging for the chance to take over on it. If it weren’t, like….” Newton shook his head, shutting his eyes to shut out the world. “Look, honestly? Of course a part of me wants to keep San alive, right? I’m not talking about the fact that we share, like…you know. Genetic…you know what I mean, okay? I’m not gonna….”

“I know,” Hermann said, patting Newton’s hand, holding it down against the arm rest when the jet rumbled and bucked a little. The idea that clinging to the chair to stop the plane from experiencing turbulence was obviously improper thinking—it would do nothing. But it helped, in a way. “I understand that it is, in essence, a part of you.”

“No,” Newton said quickly. “No, what’s that? Improper thinking?”

Hermann tilted his head, eyes practically bulging at Newton’s phrasing. Purely coincidence, of course, but it still unnerved him.

“It’s not, in essence, _anything_ of me, man. It’s a genetic hybrid of human and kaiju, alright? Just because it’s _my_ fucking human DNA doesn’t mean…I mean. That’s not the point!”

“What is?”

“What is what?”

“The point,” Hermann said insistently, watching Newton key himself up only to melt against the stiff back of the seat once more. It took a lot of energy to worry about falling out of the sky for a solid hour. He was, in a way, burning himself out of his anxiety spell. Not that it wasn’t there, just that the physical symptoms were harder to see.

Newton knuckled his forehead, muttering something bitterly to himself before he grabbed Hermann’s neck and pulled him over to kiss his cheek. Hermann was startled, placing his hand over Newton’s on his neck, ready to pull him off if need be. He was, unfortunately, sensitive to Newton suddenly grabbing him there. Perfectly normal, of course. Perfectly natural. Hermann hated his impulse to shove Newton off all the same.

“We have to kill it, dude,” he whispered against Hermann. “San’s built to stabilize the connection. Maybe I can kick those Precursor fucks out of my head, but he can’t and he’s going to reopen the breach.”

“How…how c—”

Newton tilted Hermann’s head and kissed him again, aligning their mouths. While Hermann was certain it was to gag him from asking more questions, he carded fingers through Newton’s hair and moved his chin to match up better. Damn him but he could be distracted this way. He pulled back, settling himself, smiling softly.

“How can you be certain he’s going to open the breach?” Hermann asked quickly before Newton could stop him.

“Dude! C’mon, can’t I just—”

Hermann only gave him a look, like peering over a pair of readers he currently had dangling from his neck. No wonder so many people assumed him to be a grandfather. But, no, that was a nagging thought from old arguments between Newton and himself back in the lab. Focus.

“Can’t I _just_ make out with—”

Hermann’s look stayed steady.

“A _little_ , Herms, c’mon. Stop giving me The Look. Dude!”

He shoved Hermann playfully, dancing his way around the question. Newton had become very good at this. Better than ever, it seemed. He would stamp down the uncomfortable and play off that he was better than he was. Hermann thought, again, that perhaps the only way they could have an open and honest conversation was to hook themselves up to a PONs unit and risk another Drift. Risk was the incorrect term, of course, but it was becoming more compelling to work out how to get his equipment back from his lab at the PPDC and bring it home to their flat where they could not be disturbed by anyone save the people stationed outside to watch them.

But, no.

No.

That was not how people should speak to each other. That was certainly not how _they_ should speak to each other. Hermann grabbed Newton’s chin and turned it towards him, glancing down at Newton’s lips.

“How can you be certain he’s going to open the breach?” Hermann asked again, holding Newton steady so he couldn’t turn away or laugh. He could only roll his eyes. “Newt, please. Please, just talk to me. We get so very far and then you pull away. I haven’t even pressed you about….”

Hermann licked his lip. The words were stuck in his throat. Perhaps this is how Newton felt. So, instead, to get his point across, he put his hand flat on Newton’s chest. Newton’s breath faltered and fluttered a moment before he grabbed Hermann’s hand.

“I know,” he answered.

“Eventually, yes?” Hermann asked, the common volley of their conversations.

“Event—”

“Then tell me about San,” Hermann interrupted. “Why? How? Tell me anything. Tell me everything, darling. We’ve got time.”

Newton’s eye twitched and Hermann was afraid he was going to shut down completely until he noticed some of the blush return to his pale cheeks. He smiled, a little pinch at the corner of his mouth, and Hermann sat back.

“What?”

“Whadya mean, ‘what?’” Newton asked, grinning at him. “You’re just sugary sweet, aren’t you, Herm?”

“What does that—”

“Yeah, alright. Listen, I was enjoying it way more when you were regaling me with your culinary history.” Newton nuzzled in under Hermann’s chin, which was annoying and pleasurable and damn him and his distractions. He looked up at Hermann again. “ _Darling_.”

Hermann’s face heated up as he realized _why_ Newton was calling him that. “Well, wait, I-I…well I—”

“Yeah. You’re cute, it’s alright. I won’t tell anyone you have a predilection for, like, absolutely sappy pet names. ‘ _Darling._ ’”

“You’re deliberately avoiding the question again, Newton,” Hermann grumbled without shoving him away.

“I am.”

“So, either continue or I’ll—”

“What? You’ll what?”

Hermann did not have an answer for that. They were on a jet. There was nowhere to go. And while he was perhaps mildly annoyed and he would never admit this aloud to anyone besides Newton—perhaps not even to him—he did enjoy the physical contact.

“Exactly,” Newton said, like he could read Hermann’s mind. He had to wonder, again, if that were possible. Of course not. Ten long years between one drift and then the last one muddied up with Precursors. No.

“Just _tell_ me about—”  

“Alright! Alright.” Newton sat back in his chair, one hand on the arm rest, the other on Hermann. Two vastly different forms of an anchor. “Alright. So. San. Fuck, dude.”

“I’m sure,” Hermann said, swatting back Newton’s attempt at a joke. “Go on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, there was a pause in this because I was working on some Ravager things (ha Guardians of the Galaxy...I love thee), but we're back into the swing of things! Thanks for reading and sticking around. I promise you good things are coming for these nerds. Also terrible things. Also probably more incoherent banter. HUZZAH!


	11. Doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They arrive at the naval base where Ranger Jules Reyes shows them what they've found. The question, of course, is how to get it. Newton, despite his claims that they are totally going to destroy San, is pretty sure he has the solution for capturing San.
> 
> Hermann isn't sure about any of this and his damnable leg is killing him. Again, Newton thinks he has the solution for this, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We find San!
> 
> Also handjobs. We get handjobs. Excellent.

“Holy dicks!” Newton shouted with relief, stepping out of the radius of the helicopter blades. “I hate flying, dude.”

“I know,” Hermann answered, leaning against Newton as they found their legs beneath them.

“I hate it.”

“As you’ve said.”

“Holy shit, Jesus fuck.”

“Quite.”

“Gentlemen!” someone called down the runway of the navy carrier base. “Doctors, this way.”

“Who’s that?” Newton yelled.

The poor man’s ears hadn’t popped fully, and he was still recovering from the slightly rough landing into Sydney. Just their luck a storm front would rear its ugly head and toss them around a few times. Even Hermann felt sick to his stomach, risking a trip to the onboard toilet to empty said stomach. The changes in altitude, temperature, and barometric pressures didn’t aid him in the slightest. He was close to miserable. But he dragged on anyways because there was work to be done.

“Ranger Reyes,” Hermann answered above the din. “A pleasure to see you again.”

“Likewise,” she answered over her shoulder, already marching towards a command center set up in one of the towers of the base. “I assume you’ve been briefed?”

“Why ain’t none of you giving me any love when you see me again? The world almost ends a couple of times and you’re over pretending like you’ve got any feelings?” Jake asked, running up from the helicopter with a hand smashed down over his head. “’Sup, Jules.”

“You don’t get to ‘sup’ me today,” she said with a severe look that had residual blowback on the others. Hermann felt himself stagger, though that could be more from his useless locked-up knee than an actual visceral reaction to Ranger Reyes.

“The hell did I do?”

Nate just clapped Jake on the shoulder and followed Reyes towards the tower.

“Me-ow,” Newton said offhandedly, looking around. He shouldered their bag before he slipped a hand around Hermann’s waist. “Dude, I’m stretching you when we get any goddamn time to sit still.”

“That won’t be—”

“Yes it is,” Newton answered, helping Hermann, despite the fact that Hermann hated having to use him as a secondary crutch when he was supposed to be tending to and providing for Newton. It had not been nearly long enough for him to recover from everything that had happened while under the Precursors, let alone the unfortunate physical debilitation of being locked up in his cell, but he was doing a bang-up job helping Hermann cross the tarmac. “Stretch, little rub, little lie down. Doctor’s orders.”

“So _now_ you’re a doctor,” Hermann grumbled.

“Now I’m a doctor, yep. Doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor.”

“Insufferable.” Lord help him, Hermann loved the man so much.

“Irredeemable,” Newton was saying, listing off a few favorite adjectives as they managed up the stairs—no, of course no lift, of course no ramp, of _course_ not, blast them all. “Incorrigible. Inveter—”

“Newton,” Hermann whispered, knocking his forehead against Newton’s temple. “Please.”

“Right, yeah.” Newton winced his eye shut, laughing to cover his embarrassment. “Right. Got stuck in a, uh…a…so what’s going on here?”

Ranger Jules Reyes was a whip of a woman, steady hands on steady hips as she squared her shoulders and looked at the staggering, limping, miserable duo by the entrance. She brushed back flyaways around her forehead, grabbing a chair and scooting it across the floor towards them.

“Glad you could make it,” she said with a sympathetic, if somewhat sharp smile.

Kind words, distant action. She had the air of someone saddled with too many tasks and not enough hours in the day to dream up solutions for them, let alone complete them. It was a weariness that seemed to weigh down on all the senior staff.

Newton helped Hermann into the chair, the two muttering bitterly at each other until Newton snapped, “Take the chair, dude, I swear to god!” and he did, for the sheer fact that they had unwittingly caused a scene and he did not enjoy the attention. “Jesus! Okay.”

“Yes, fine,” Hermann muttered. He stabbed his cane between his knees and held it there.

“Okay,” Newton said again, even if he kept a hand on Hermann’s shoulder, his hip tucked in close, standing watch.

“Okay,” Ranger Reyes said with that sharp smile again. “So, obviously we know about the radiation signatures coming off the coast.”

“Obviously,” Newton answered with an impatient wave of his hand. “Listen. We know. We know you have radiation signatures. We know you found an ‘anomaly.’ _My_ ‘anomaly.’ We’ve been over this, like, a thousand times. Listen, lady—”

“Lady?” Ranger Reyes rolled her eyes, landing on Nate’s face, who shook his head. “Right, I’ll let that fly once, Dr. Geiszler.”

“Uh, yeah, no, that’s not—”

“We didn’t get to formally meet,” Ranger Reyes said, effectively cutting him off. “What with you trying to destroy the world, being controlled by Precursors, and killing my Jaeger pilots.”

“ _You’re_ Jaeger…Jules, c’mon, w—”

“Ah.” Jules held up a finger, winking at Nate, who had apparently spoken up to defend? Deflect? He leaned back into Jake unconsciously, who gripped his shoulder once. Hermann wasn’t sure what the dynamics were for these three, but there was something going on between them. “I lead J-Science now. And we have the last of the K-Science crew with us. So.” She raised up her hands, weighing them back and forth like scales. “We have a lot to work on.”

“What are y—”

“Shutting up, Nate. Look at this,” Jules said.

Nate seemed boxed in between Jake and Jules, crossing his arms as he conceded the argument. Which, of course, made her light up with victory. She briefly touched his cheek, laughing with Jake before she shook her head and wagged a finger. “Mm-mm. I’m still mad at you.”

“You’re still…c’mon. Jules. You know it was only a laugh, love.”

“Was I laughing?”

“Come _on_.”

“You tell me when I’m laughing, then,” said Jules, circling her face. “You tell me when this is laughing and I’ll tell you not to pull that shit again.”

It almost made Hermann laughed. The woman was strong, both in body and mind. Especially in mind. She had come to him a few times about the Jaeger tech, popping off questions in rapid-fire succession without getting bogged down by oversimplification of the necessary mathematics behind the programming. She was well-liked by many, if not necessarily all, and put a few cadets in their place with impressive physical precision. But beyond that, her greatest weapon was her smile. Hermann recalled it often as she helped him rig up the PONs unit back at their last lab. Something about her reminded him of the man he was adamant about rescuing and perhaps that was the spark that helped him complete his project and risk his life to go after him.

Jules rounded about on the terminal. She had projected the topographic map of the ocean floor surrounding the coastline, adjusting the coordinates and display. The first flat display in front of her warmed up, lines overlapping lines, fine-tuning to her touch. When she took a seat, she reminded Hermann very briefly of their old friend Tendo Choi, keeping an eye on the fight at the command center in the Hong Kong Shatterdome.

“Well, no sense in beating around the bush, boys.” She held a finger over a command stroke, turning around to make sure she had their attention. “So. Without further ado, feast your eyes on this.”

The display shuttered and snapped before it found the right frequency to project a hologram up on the circular display. It was larger, detailed, and 3D in nature. The water rippled over a form that was more formidable than Hermann had anticipated. A child had been his original thought, even if he wasn’t sure why he imagined it as such, but this?

The figure stretched out along the ocean bed, tearing blunt fingers through the water as it’s body undulated side to side to propel forward. It was hard to see some of the webbing, laced both between the fingers, the toes, and, as Hermann imagined, the slightly rigid dorsal fins down the back. He was certainly bipedal with a short, stubby tail. The hide appeared to be smooth, definitely softer than the scaled and armored kaiju flesh they were used to, and there was a tuft of hair sprouting from the top of his head. Several intersecting plates armored his stomach, but the rest appeared to be decidedly more flesh. More “human” in nature. The face, however, was sharp, with a ridged rectangular snout. Almost crocodile in nature or perhaps more shark-like. And, of course, those bright blue eyes. Even through the drone’s camera that had somehow found and followed the creature, Hermann could see how much they glowed. He felt remorse that he thought they bared a remarkable resemblance to Newton’s eyes.

“Uh-huh. Well. Look at that sucker go,” Jake remarked, studying the creature up and down. “Fast swimmer.

“We kept it in a, uh, a big tank,” Newton said, his voice high pitched but breathy, almost nonexistent. Hermann glanced up at him in time to catch the glassy look in his eyes. “He’s. He’s grown.”

“How much, do you reckon?” asked Jake while Nate messed with a dial to zero in on the coordinates. Jules slapped his hand and the two argued silently with each other, all clenched jaws and pointed stares. Hermann leaned his head against Newton’s hip to remind him, to remind both of them, that they were there.

“Uh, well. If the ratio here is…okay, uh, rough estimate? And, again, rough estimate, man, because I can’t really remember wh….” Newton shook his head, buffering his thoughts. “He was about, oh, 4 and a half feet…maybe? Last I remember him, which was…I don’t know. I don’t even know. But, I mean, look at that. He’s taller than you.” Newton blindly put a hand on Hermann’s back, touching it briefly before he pulled away. “The readout there is saying 2.15 meters, I mean.” Newton ran his fingers through his hair until he clenched his fists, like he was going to rip his hair out at the root. “Small for a kaiju, but...uh…. Heh, baby kaiju….”

Newton’s words died on a shaky laugh.

“Alright, Doc,” said Jules, a hand on her hip, the other leaning on the terminal as she turned back to look at the group. “How do we get him?”

\---

For someone who really liked the idea of the stage, who dreamed about it almost as much as you dreamed about seriously tearing into some alien biology and sinking teeth into some far-out (ha) applications of genetic replications, attention was not something you wanted or handled well all the time. Not now, mostly. Especially.

_How do we get him?_

Oh, super easy, dude. Super easy. Uh, well, he’s a sucker for mackerel, right? Sardines, eh, a little less. Dude would go to town on a tuna roll, though. And he doesn’t like to be shocked, he doesn’t mind loud noises, poky things are a mixed bag. Do _not_ tug at his fins. Not that you could tell the Precursors that or ---- who was somewhere, somewhere in the background. No, sir. And, okay, definitely don’t tell the others this, but San there really likes little bioluminescent lights, especially if they’re small and soft. He used to track them with his eyes when he was just a little thing, hardly bigger than your forearm, really, and you knew. You goddamn knew down in your soul, down in the only part of you left that you thought was human and cared and burned in the pit of you like the last light left on in the world, man. That part of you knew that he was fascinated by them. That he tracked the movement simply because it was pretty and mesmerizing. Not to hunt. Not to destroy. Because it was something beautiful and novel and bright.

_How do we get him?_

Little San there also really liked some Van Morrison. Didn’t happen often. Hardly ever. But, sometimes, sometimes when you were being really good and letting them guide your hand for most of the process and you didn’t fight too hard and you were maybe a little drunk and hadn’t done anything to amuse or piss them off, they forgot to control _everything._ They let little moments slip in and you just turned on some music and let it play in the background. A little lifeline to your humanity or something, not that they knew. Not that you knew either, honestly. And that little bastard monster there would twitch his head up, paying attention, his oddly adorable stub tail twitching to the beat. You knew. You goddamn knew.

\---

“Why don’t we send a Jaeger down there to get him?” Jake asked, tapping the edge of the console and looking horrifically offended when Jules kicked at his seat. “What? That’s literally what we always do. Why not for this one?”

“We could,” Nate said with a shrug. “But size and presence. We don’t want to alert the general population of San’s existence nor do we want to burn resources. We could go nuclear?”

“Oh yeah, like that’s not burning—”

“That’s what they did for K-Day, remember? Tactical nuclear missiles? I’m not saying launch a whole huge assault, I’m saying—”

“Yeah, and blowing ‘em up killed thousands and really put a nasty smear on our planet. Remember?” Jake said, leaning into Nate’s space. “So how’s that subtle? How’s that not wasting resources, like ya keep goin’ on about? How’s—”

“Precision. If we launch—”

“I need diprenorphine or nalorphine, I need a boat that can crank up six hundred…mm, go with an even thousand pounds, I need a saline tank big enough and I need a sound system that can go underwater with an adaptor for this.” Newton rummaged in his pocket, yanking out an ancient looking iPod with a cracked screen. “And I can get you San.”

Hermann looked between the iPod and Newton holding it, slightly unsettled by the look in his eyes. He shifted, bumping his elbow against Newton, who blinked and turned to check on him with a little, “mm?”

“Is this the best solution?” Hermann whispered, swallowing hard.

“Oh, yeah, buddy, yeah. Yeah, this is the only thing we got. Trust me.”

A simple request. A simple, terrible, painful request at that. Hermann only nodded his response, because, above all else, he had to, even if he couldn’t trust his own voice then.

The two scientists turned back to the Rangers, one looking excited, perhaps on the verge of manic, while the other looked pale, perhaps on the verge of despair. There was some bleeding of the two, spilling one into the other.

And Jules, of course. Jules smiled.

\---

“Alright. Boat’s gonna be ready at 0500 tomorrow,” said Nate, walking with Hermann and Newton inside the naval base. He punched the air to reveal a wristwatch, calculating the local time. “Gives us roughly five hours. Best we can do to make sure we get everything you need, Newt.”

“Thanks, man, seriously. I’m just kinda glad we’re not, you know, resorting to nukes.”

Nate gave a half-hearted laugh and shrug at that. The man had tried. They could not fault him for suggesting it, although, yes. Yes they very well could. Terrible idea.

“Yeah, well. If you think this is gonna work, then. Hey,” said Nate with another shrug. He pointed at a cabin door that was terribly reminiscent of the old cabins in the shatterdome. “Hope it’s okay. We were able to secure a room for you two. If you’re really not comfortable with sharing quarters, I can—”

“It’s fine,” Hermann said, feeling a pulsing pain vibrate down his leg that was ruining all sense of propriety at the moment. “We’re fine, Ranger.”

“Right. Right.” Nate held the door for them. “And there’s MREs for you two. Nothing fancy, but, uh. Yeah. So.”

“Yes,” Hermann answered, limping into the room and holding Newton’s arm. “Again, we’re fine, Ranger.”

“Oh, he just means we’re—”

“Thank you!” Hermann growled, pushing the door shut. He was surprised to hear a locking mechanism from the outside, checking the door. “He…they locked us in! They locked us in like bloody criminals!”

“Ah.” Newton looked at the door, nodding slowly as his eyes ticked down to the floor. “Yeah, well. One of us technically is, Herms. So. That’s what you get for fallin’ in with a bad crowd.”

“Do shut up, Newton.”

“Alright. Come on.” Newton put his arm around Hermann again, leading him on towards the uncomfortably small bed. Hermann protested with vitriol, but Newton kept a hold of him all the way over to the mattress, easing him down. “Okay. Yeah. That’s fine.”

“I’m not a bloody invalid! You can’t—”

“I can. I did. I will,” Newton answered, kneeling down to help Hermann remove his shoes. When he got a painful knock on his back and looked up, rubbing the spot, Hermann realized he was being unnecessarily cruel. “You done?”

“Yes,” Hermann grumbled, melting back towards the wall. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”

“No, it is not,” Newton answered, peeling off Hermann’s socks and setting them aside with the loafers. “And I know it’s not yours either. Just. Here.”

“No, Newton, darling, I should do better. You—”

“Can take care of you for one night,” Newton chastised, helping Hermann stretch out on the bed. He realized quickly that he took up most of it and when he tried to scoot and make room, Newton simply put a hand flat on his chest to pin him in place. “We got a couple of hours, so. Let me do this, dude. Please.”

“Yes, fine.” Hermann breathed out slowly through pursed lips, training his eyes to the ceiling. “This day has not been pleasant for either of us.”

“Yeah, cause flying sucks.”

“Indeed, so you’ve said.” Hermann laughed, a bit forced, a bit of a trick he seemed to have picked up from Newton, before closing his eyes.

“How’re you feeling?” Newton asked.

Hermann breathed, assessing himself. “I’m tired. That’s all. My bloody leg is locking up and it feels like bloody needles in my spine and I—”

There was the distinct tug of his belt, unzipping of his fly and then a firm pressure kneading precisely over the knotted area that was screaming the most. Hermann groaned despite himself, chasing after the hand that was helping him before he opened his eyes and attempted to sit up.

“Don’t you dare, dude,” Newton said quietly, looking chastely at his hip as he worked out the knot. “This day sucked.”

“You said,” Hermann answered, swallowing hard as he tried to relax back down again.

“I just. I can’t believe how big he got. Like.” Newton shrugged, laughing when his eyes flicked up to meet Hermann, who felt a blush rise that matched Newt’s face. “It sucks not knowing. Not remembering.”

Before he could answer some soft, kind platitude, Newton slid his hand down Hermann’s thigh and gently pushed it up to stretch out his quad. He hissed, unexpecting it, holding onto Newton’s forearm until he could settle back again.

“I…I am sorry,” Hermann whispered. He reached up for Newton’s face, cupping his jaw. “I wish I could help.”

“You do.”

“I wish there was more.”

Newton smiled, sighed out a laugh, and turned to kiss Hermann’s hand. He stayed there a moment, both of them still, quiet, if bent at slightly awkward angles. It was only broken apart when Newton started to shake his head into Hermann’s palm.

“What is it?” When Newton didn’t answer, Hermann moved his hand up to pet through his hair, tracing a line around the shell of his ear. “What is it?” he asked again.

“I’m….” Newton laughed, pushed it out this time. “I’m scared, dude. I’m scared.”

Despite brief protests, both verbal from Newton and physical from himself, Hermann sat himself up and wrapped his arms around Newton, cradling his back and head. He whispered encouraging things, little simple promises that, if anything, they were going to stick together through this. There was nothing that was going to take them apart. He would fight tooth and nail and cane if he had to. And that did make Newton laugh, perhaps even genuinely. It was so hard to tell these days. He shifted to kiss Newton’s cheek, his temple, carding through his hair like he could brush away the cobwebs of his fears. He kissed over near his eye, the little crinkle lines from laughing so much. Then his jawline and the long stripe of his jugular when he stretched his neck to make more room. Planting his lips harder when he met the stiff line of his collared shirt, peeling it back slightly. When there was no objection, he pushed the shirt back and continued, trailing his lips down towards the crease of his neck, his collarbone, his tattoos.

“Herms,” Newton whispered, something almost a question there or perhaps a request.

Hermann sat up, realizing he may have gone too far. He blinked, clearing his vision, holding onto Newton’s shoulders.

“I’m scared too,” he answered earnestly. Shamefully. “I’m terrified. I don’t know what is going to happen. I don’t know what happened before and I do not know how to fix it. But I want to. I want to keep trying. And, damnit all, I’m doing it by your side. You can’t get rid of me again. You—”

\---

Keep him. Keep him. **_Keep_** him. _Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind_. Here. Now. Goddamnit, keep him. Keep him. Jesus Christ, together, man. With you.

\---

There was hardly time to carefully peel and fold clothes and set aside. It was frenetic and desperate, blindly pushing articles away as their mouths locked onto each other. Hermann was ashamed to admit he popped two buttons on Newton’s collared shirt, the incident marked with a short gasp, a quick apology, and then nothing more. He ignored the fact that Newton kept his undershirt on same as Newton ignored him when he kept a hand on some of the faded mangled flesh of his hip.

Hermann pulled Newton to him, glancing down only to be surprised that the tattoos did indeed go to his thighs. He braced a hand on one, rubbing his thumb across the smooth, unmarred ink.

“You didn’t—”

“I didn’t,” Newton answered, chasing after his mouth again. Greedy and wanting. Hermann matched his enthusiasm in kind.

The hand migrated again, slipping between them as Hermann grasped Newton’s and his own cocks and stroked them together, each man melting into the delightful friction. Poor, lovely, wanting Newton whimpered into Hermann’s mouth, bouncing his hips back and forth without lingering too much pressure on Hermann. He tried to encourage him, tightening his grip, trailing his fingers up and down Newton’s back—over the shirt, of course. It was too perfect to ruin by accidental curiosity and a desire to free him of all his past traumas. Not yet. Not now. Now, now they rutted against each other, with Hermann propped up against the pillows and Newton digging his fingers into Hermann’s shoulder blades.

Hermann swallowed his moans, dampened his panting, and bit down his shuddering responses. He was soon sweating, electrified by Newton atop him. And it appeared that Newton had no such misgivings of quiet fucking. He whimpered beautifully, he dragged out shaky moans, he proclaimed so sweetly.

“Jesus Christ, fuck, Herms. Oh god, please, fuck, fuck me,” slipped out of him repeatedly, babbling wetly against Hermann’s ear. His fists tightened behind Hermann’s back and he stretched his neck back again, the stylized ink striped across the bottom of his neck so inviting that Hermann curled down to lick at the pit between his collarbones and graze with his teeth.

Newton pumped his cock against Hermann’s faster, more frenetic, racing towards the edge. He skated hands, ghosting fingers up to the back of Hermann’s head until he found his hairline and gripped it, pulling stars into the corner of his vision. The pain scattered into a distant pleasure that choked a sound out of his throat and, as though by invitation, Newton came between them. He did so with a delirious shout, trembling above Hermann until his hips stuttered and stopped. Hermann simply stroked him through it, panting again at the disheveled sight of him.

“Jesus,” Newton whimpered, collapsing his head down on Hermann’s shoulder. “Fuck.”

“Q-Quite,” Hermann answered, his voice raspy and tight. He rubbed Newton’s back, holding him until he stopped trembling again. He held still, letting him come back, come down from it. “Lovely. Oh, you—”

The words withered to nothing when he felt Newton stroking him with the help of his own hand.

“I won’t forget you,” Newton said, pressing their forehead’s together so he could look at him.

His eyes were blown out and blue as the Baltic sea, terribly incongruent with the pale green and brown eyes he remembered from so very long ago. His words breathed softly, and Hermann, despite the haze, thought there might be a second meaning in there.

He pinched his mouth together again, breathing hard through his nose.

“No, c’mon. I heard you,” Newton said, loosening his grip, stroking down the underside of his shaft and back up again in a tender line that burned a stripe of desire through Hermann’s spine. “I heard you. Don’t shut it all up.” He kissed Hermann again. “Please. Please, I heard you. I know I did.”

The most he could muster was a breathy whine, encouraged to do more. But it was difficult, it was distracting, it was deliciously demanding. Hermann closed his eyes and held onto Newton until he stroked him over the edge, offering a soft, “God, yes,” as his best attempt at a reply. If it was enough, please, if it was enough.

“I’m going to unstick that tongue someday,” Newton said, helping Hermann back down onto the mattress. It was still miserably small, and his hip was still miserably unhappy, but Newton slipped his body around Hermann like they were always meant to fit that way. “Whatever’s got you blocked up. Cause now I know you can moan, Herms. Y’know? I just gotta have it. I gotta.”

“I insist you try,” Hermann answered, arcing his back to stretch out his hip a little better.

“Trial and error,” Newton said with a smile. “That’s all it is. We’ll figure it out.”

“Eventually.”

Newton snorted a laugh. “Eventually,” he repeated back and rolled over to kiss him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind." is from William Wordsworth's Ode INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD, poem X.


	12. This is Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have the boat, but it seems that San has been travelling further than anticipated and Hermann discovers they might be on the boat for more than twenty-four hours. He is not pleased.
> 
> A shorter chapter as we get closer and closer to picking up San and further and further into Newton's potential mania.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the spelling errors in this one, it was a bit of a rush and I'll be combing back through it later.

Newton pushed Hermann’s hand away when he tried to take his paper cup and dump the black coffee into his own. They blinked in tired unison. Hair disheveled, clothes rumpled and traces of irritated skin on their neck, stomachs, and shoulders. They looked downright pathetic. There was a time when one day slipped into the next and they remained awake against all better judgement, but apparently their bodies were not set up for that anymore. Not without help. Though neither would say they regretted how they spent their precious few hours last night together.

“Right.” Jake appeared, as it were. Hermann’s skin felt like it had been gently laid down across a live wire as he shifted away from the sound. “Well, it’s ugly early out here. I can’t even tell ya what time I think it should be. Ready?”

Jake had a bit more pepper to him as he bound up to the dock, slapping Hermann’s back in passing. It nearly caused him to drop his meager cup of coffee, inciting a quick, powerful rage that he was too damnably tired to do anything about.

No. Not anything. Hermann grabbed Jake’s arm and yanked him close.

“Watch. It,” he said through his teeth.

“Ey, yeah, alright. Alright,” Jake said, pulling his arm back. “Jee-sus, Gottlieb. Crawled off the wrong side of the bed last night?”

Hermann pursed his lips, grumbling something sticky at the back of his throat as Newton casually lifted his cup in Jake’s direction before taking a sip.

“Nice hickey, dude,” he commented.

Jake slapped his neck and Newton laughed so hard, he snorted bubbles into his drink, quickly wiping his mouth off with the back of his sleeve.

“Oh, shit, no,” he was saying through a fit of giggles, muffled by his arm. “I was kidding, but that is priceless, dude. Oh. Oh, my stomach hurts.”

Jake narrowed his eyes, a fresh blush tinting his cheeks under the floodlights of the dock. He shrugged it off, rounding his shoulders as he said, “Laugh it up, geezer.”

“Oh, I certainly will,” Newton shot back, friendly enough.

When Nate jogged up with his navy jacket zipped to his chin, they could see a very faint purple bruise peeking from his collar on the left side of his neck, disappearing into some of the stubble he’d accumulated over the last twenty-four hours. Newton spotted it and doubled over, laughing so hard it came out in short, barking gasps. Hermann was remiss to see his coffee spill out onto the dock, but it didn’t dampen the small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Glad to see we’re all in, uh, high spirits,” Nate said, slowing down, sliding his hands to his hips. Jake was glaring at Newton, so Nate addressed Hermann first. “Dr. Gottlieb.”

“Ranger Lambert,” Hermann answered with a tip of his head. “Lovely morning.”

It wasn’t. The storm had passed last night, but the clouds hung low in the sky, a heavy mist coating them in a wet chill. Hermann only assumed out on the ocean would be worse with salt spray and wind, so he was wrapped up in several layers, namely as many as he had packed for the trip. He wished he had thought to bring his parka.

“Mm-hmm.” Nate nodded, all but rocking up onto his toes and heels as he looked at the three of them. His eyes softened for Jake, at least. The man was unaware of the reason for the outburst, but that quick look at Jake had him reaching briefly for his collared neckline. He didn’t quite touch it, but he knew. Nate cleared his throat as he motioned for the vessel parked at the end of the dock. “So. This is our boat. I hope it’s what you need, Newt.”

“Quite,” Hermann answered, blindly sliding his hand up Newton’s back right as he straightened himself up to standing.

“Ohhh shit.” Newton wiped his eye like he still had to swipe his fingers under the frame of his old glasses, swallowing the last of his laughter. Routine and proper sleep be damned. It was all starting to catch up to him, Hermann could see. He was afraid where the exuberant energy might take them. “So. This is us?”

The ship itself was one a whaling vessel, and while the connotations and history of it were not welcomed, the items onboard were, unfortunately, perfect for their endeavor. The group marched down to the end of the dock, boarding the boat with a few cadets from the naval base and one Ranger Reyes waiting for them in a gray rain slicker.

“Welcome aboard, boys,” she said, stepping out of their path and leading them up to the cabin. “Ready to go fishing?”

“I expect so,” Hermann said, unable to keep a hand on Newton like he wanted once they were all up on deck. He clenched his empty fist at his side, watching Newton flitter to the controls, shoving his way through to pull up the topography map again before he was gone down through the hatch in the floor to the storage space directly beneath them. Hermann grumbled, taking a seat on an old, rough-looking bench so as to stay out of the way and relieve his leg for some of their travel. “How far are we needed out before we come across the subject?”

“…f that tank is gonna hold, but pretty solid, honestly. We’ll look past the fact that their supply of diprenorphine is about a year past expiration. I’m pretty sure we can still work with…hey.” Newton climbed up from the hold down below, practically launching himself up the last step and bounding over to Hermann, where he slid onto the bench next to him, knocking elbows together. “So?”

Hermann took his hand immediately, giving it a quick, thoughtful squeeze.

Newton was not a fan of flying. Hermann did not particularly do well on water. Though his was less fear and more sea-sickness than anything. He did manage to get some anti-nausea medication before they left the dock, a tiny container in his left pocket just in case.

“Everything alright?” he muttered quickly to Newton.

“Stellar,” Newton answered. “Tanks good. The hydraulics look great on their winch system. I think we can do this.”

It was not the answer Hermann was looking for, but more his fault for not asking directly. He opened his mouth to try again when Newton shoved away from him again to go over to the display that the rangers were mulling over.

“That’s twenty kilometers away from Norfolk,” Nate was saying, exasperated at the argument started between the other two. “That’s two days t—”

“I beg your pardon, two days?” Hermann asked, standing up from his seat. “We. We didn’t plan for two days.”

“No, Doctor. We didn’t,” Nate answered, rolling his eyes towards him, not exacerbated by Hermann, but simply by the situation itself.

“Yeah, _now_ he’s there. But if you look at his migration patterns—”

“’Migration patterns,’” Newton said sarcastically, his voice climbing octaves. “What the hell are you—”

“Don’t interrupt her, mate,” Jake said, almost threatening, almost warning him. “Trust me. It ain’t a—”

“You don’t interrupt for a change,” Reyes shot back, flashing Jake something of a familiar look. The poor man was still in hot water, as it seemed, though that little bit of information was not _helping_ their _situation._

“Two. Days!” Hermann said insistently, stomping his cane on the ground to break up the almost-shouting that was building up between them again. He looked between the Rangers, since Newton’s back was to him while he typed away at the console, already pulling up a projection of San’s previous paths across the ocean floor. “Please tell me we aren’t going to be stuck on this boat for two days?”

“No way, Herms. Reyes here is right,” Newton said, whipping his head back around, a bright smile flashed up at all of them. He patted her arm only for her to shove him aside. Newton didn’t seem to mind. He straightened himself up, turning their attention back to the screen. He poked at the hologram, tracing a yellow dotted line across the ocean floor. “He’s gonna head back this way and, if his little routine pattern you’ve been recording is anything, we should cross paths with him sometime around seven tonight. Yeah, it’s not great. We won’t be back at the naval base until tomorrow, but….” Newton shrugged, and Hermann wilted back onto the bench again, looking everywhere but at the group ahead of him.

Two days.

On a boat.

On the ocean.

A man could consider weeping.

Especially when he neglected to bring anything with him on the assumption that they would return that evening.

It wasn’t long before they had shoved off from the dock, pushing hard across the open waters and meeting the sun like the tip of an arrowhead. Hermann stayed up in the cabin with the Rangers, simply because being able to see the horizon helped with his sea sickness. He could tell they would have liked to have had some time with the just the three of them, presumably to either argue more or break down and start going at it like young, physically peak rabbits. The mood swung back and forth every couple of seconds. And he could appreciate it, except that he was trapped there with them and he was going to be a bit of a bastard to show his displeasure.

Newton did not stick around. He slipped back down into the hold, checking out items, rummaging loudly, quickly finding another part of the ship. Within an hour he was on the lower deck with a few cadets, invading whatever activity they had done to occupy themselves. Their fault for being so close to the observation radius of the captain cabin. Hermann pressed his head against the glass partition that surrounded them, giving them nearly a 360 view of the deck and, by extension, the ocean around them. He watched Newton walking across the deck, his voice muffled but ecstatic. Whatever he was regaling them with, it was equal parts entertaining and embarrassing. Hermann could see one of the cadets trying to figure a way to escape. He wanted very much for Newton to come back to him and regale to _him_ , entertain _him_ , but he refused to beg for company or shackle him in place. It was clear that the man needed to roam and tire himself out. That was his choice. His limited freedom.

Time wore on, as it was wont to do. Hermann had wasted as much of his patience as he could on the Rangers and watching the ocean before he finally got up and decided to make his way down and see if there weren’t any supplies onboard, namely something he could ingest. He was lucky in that the ship was large and moving fast and the waters, for the most part, smooth. He hardly stumbled down the stairs, stomping his way past another pair of what looked to be literal _children_ playing a card game. Teenagers, hopefully. Hermann saluted them out of some misplaced habit, stomping on to the galley, when he heard a familiar voice behind him that made him sigh, and stretch back up to his full height.

“How many times do I have to say, you definitely don’t have to salute them.”

\---

It had been a gross miscalculation that put them on that boat for more than twelve hours. Nobody to blame, of course, because “little” San was a wild…well, not animal, but was wild nonetheless and now that he was out of his cage (and doing just fine), he’d done a great job exploring a large swatch of the ocean. Far away from his homeland of Russia. The waters around Australia were warmer, so, couldn’t be blamed for heading out to the more tropical area.

But it was a long goddamn time on the boat and there was nothing to do but listen to Jake, Jules, and Nate play lover’s quarrel and watch Hermann try not to puke. God, that wasn’t fair to him. That wasn’t fair that he was stuck. That wasn’t fair that he had been locked in the room last night too, simply because they were together.

They were together.

God _damnit_ that felt good. To think. To experience. To know. It felt amazing. It felt fast and hot in the ribcage. It felt like a buzz. Like a high. Like a torrential downpour. Like lightning. Like thunder. Like holy shit how do people just sit still for four goddamn minutes?

Back down to the hold. Check the seals. Check the water solutions. Check the sedatives. Check the speakers, seriously, because San deserved quality audio after what they were going to do. And carry baby home, that’s what. Carry him home and take care of him.

Take care of him.

Take

Was Hermann saluting again? Jesus Christ.

\---

The hand was on his back, a weight almost barreling into him and knocking him over before he had a chance to turn around and tell him off. Newton slipped into view, even as he gripping Hermann tighter and kept him upright.

“What’re you doing, Herms?” he asked with a bright, infectious smile on his face. Oh, that wasn’t fair. That wasn’t fair at all.

“Looking for something to _eat_ ,” Hermann said, trying to sound firm and miserable and smiling anyways. Damn him.

“Oh yeah, yeah. Skipped breakfast and everything, didn’t we? Most important meal of the day.” Newton gently bumped his shoulder into Hermann’s. “Although, I’m telling you right now, dude, if it’s only shark and turtle soup aboard, I’m out.”

“That is hardly—”

“I’m just _saying_.”

“Well, don’t say it,” Hermann said with a scowl, which was knocked off his face again by one of Newton’s laughs. “You’re in good spirits today?”

“Am I? I dunno. I feel a little….” Newton waved his hand, made a fist and tucked it around Hermann’s hip as they went into the ship again. “I’m excited. I’m excited to see, you know? You know.”

“I know,” Hermann said, leaning on Newton more than he generally liked. “And making friends with the cadets, I see?”

“Yeah, what is up with _that_? They’re kids!”

Hermann agreed with enthusiasm. The two were positively floored, reminiscing of a time ten years ago when things were different. Not better, but not like this. They stumbled into the galley with the gait of a pair of drunks, settling down at the long thin table that had served the crew of this vessel in the past. Newton patted his shoulder and shoved off again, picking apart the cabinets until he came back with two freeze dried packets of what was supposed to be some sort’ve approximation of chicken noodle soup. Newton took his time preparing them per the instructions, carrying the steaming silver bags back over to Hermann.

“Do not sniff this,” he warned, and handed Hermann his food. To which Hermann immediately stuck his nose over it and breathed in, turning away in disgust. Newton stabbed a metal utensil into his bag, laughing hard. “I told you!”

“Yes. You did,” Hermann said into his hand, wiping his nose.

“Tastes like nothing, though, so. You’re lucky,” Newton said around a mouthful. “Sorry it isn’t dinner out at Aragawa.”

Hermann hummed, holding his breath as he ate up the ration. Newton was correct, the flavor was almost non-existent, the sharp plastic smell more likely from the wrapping than the food inside. Not that that bode well for them. Still, having anything to eat was better than nothing, and he felt himself begin to warm as they spent time together again.

“Okay, so, how much do you think they’re fucking?” Newton asked, grabbing Hermann’s empty bag and utensils and disposing of them in their proper places. He spared some of the onboard fresh water to rinse off their utensils, tucking them away in a drawer. “It’s gotta be all three, though, right?”

“Absolutely,” Hermann answered, holding his hand out for Newton to come sit with him again. He took the hand immediately, slipping into the seat beside him and facing away so he could lean back and wrap Hermann’s arm around his torso. “Though I would imagine Jake’s done somethig stupid lately.”

“Obviously. Those two got Nate running circles for them, though. You can just see it,” Newton said, nuzzling back into him. He only settled and sat still when Hermann started brushing his hair back with his fingertips. “Probably shouldn’t have poked him this morning. Although, to be honest, man? Really only need Jules on my side for this. She’s the brains amongst them.”

“Indeed,” Hermann answered, enjoying this intimacy that had been afforded them. “At least she can help you locate San.”

“Yeah,” Newton said quietly. Hermann could see that his eyes were closed, the corner of his mouth barely turned up in a smile. “We get him, bring him back home. We’ll take care of him.”

“Take care of him how?” Hermann asked, a little shot of worry squirming through him. Newton merely hummed, turning his head back when Hermann stopped stroking his hair. “Newton?”

“Hmm?” He creased his eyebrows and looked back, kissing Hermann’s jaw. “It’s gonna be okay, Herms. Trust me.”

And he wanted to. Blindly, even.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Take care of him" should concern you, yes.
> 
> As always and ever, thank you for reading!!


	13. We Found Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A countdown to the events that finally bring us to San, roaming the ocean. Hermann wishes it had gone a little bit better than it did.

There was a terrible throbbing spider-crawling from his brow as Hermann grabbed at whomever had decided to apply ice to his head. He incorrectly assumed hangover, for no other reason than there was no data proceeding the event. That he was simply prone, thirsty, nauseous, and awake because of a headache. A bad one at that. The briny tang in the air knocked his senses clean off course and he shoved the hand away again.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.”

_Hardly_.

“Not a good idea, Doc,” said the helpful nuisance, steadying Hermann when he tried to stand and stumbled back against the hard metal frame of the cot. “Hold on. I’ll go get—”

“Newt?” he croaked, smacking his scaly lips together. He opened his eyes only to squeeze them tight against an onslaught of color and vibrating swirls and light. He was aware there was _someone_ in the room with him, but not who they could be. His heart hammered harder when he realized he did not recognize the voice.

“Ah. Uh.”

Hermann pushed himself up again, clamping a hand to the sizeable bruise on his brow. He groaned, shoving against the helpful _someone_. Someone who was not _Newton_. Who would not tell him where Newton _was_. Who would not….

Newton.

Either the boat lurched, or he did, and his stomach did not seem pleased with the roll. He covered his hand, expecting to see blood.

Blood.

Newton.

Oh _god_.

\---

**Five Hours to Finding San**

Hermann could only keep Newton entertained so long. They had sat in the galley a while, enjoying the relative lull of ocean waves and wind. Newton relaxed back against him, letting him pet his hair down, until his brows started to crease and his hands fidgeted upon the table.

“You don’t have to stay for my benefit,” Hermann said with a smile, rubbing his hand flat down Newton’s chest. The man hummed so pleasingly, it was an absolute delight to hear. But he was beginning to bounce his legs and it was starting to pinch in Hermann’s hip. “We could go for a walk.”

“Walk is a twenty-minute lap and we’ve got _hours_ , Herms,” Newt said. His leg was starting to go hard enough to hear the timpani of his shoe against the floor. “So stupid. We should’ve checked before. We’re just stuck. We—”

“Take me on a walk, Newton,” Hermann said gently, rubbing his chest again. A deliberate pass over that stripe of skin, that particular mark. “I’m afraid my knee is getting stiff and I think it would be good for us.”

“Us?” Newton sighed, reaching for Hermann’s hand and drawing it up to kiss his knuckles absently. “Could be. Probably. Hey, maybe we can get in on that game those kids were playing.”

“If you’d like,” Hermann answered.

He was equal parts relieved and disappointed when Newton slipped out of his embrace, standing up and offering his arm to help Hermann join him. They took their time exiting the galley, Hermann trying to preoccupy Newton and stretch out the walk to a full hour. It helped. But it wasn’t enough.

\---

Hermann’s equilibrium was perhaps not the best in ideal situations. He could hardly walk a straight line and he had a difficult time keeping himself upright. Not impossible. He could walk some twenty feet without his cane if he needed to. Or if he was well rested for it. Of if he was particularly excited enough and racing around with kaiju parts to show off to the Rangers as he harvested Kaiju Blue and attempted to invent bloody rocket fuel. Literally.

But now?

The boat itself wasn’t rocking so much as it was careening back towards what he hoped to be dry land. He hoped. He could not imagine what direction they were headed or what the elements were like outside as he sat on the cot, holding the ice bag firmly to his head. He only thought that if the floor didn’t decide to stay put, he was very much going to throw up. And he very much would like to avoid that.

The cadet from earlier tapped on the door before swinging it open. While Hermann had been hoping for Newton to fill the entryway and rush over to check on him, it would appear that Hermann was not to be that lucky. He tapped a short, sloppy salute to the side of his head, waving tiredly as Jake came in to sit with him.

“Sorry about your noggin there, Doc,” he said, smiling at the cadet and letting them know to high-tail it out of there. “Thought you weren’t supposed to sleep with a concussion.”

“You aren’t. I’m sure I’m hemorrhaging into my cerebrum,” Hermann grumbled, pretending to know any aspect of his brain’s physiology. Biology had been Newton’s field, among others. “Let’s hope it’s nothing damaging, nor permanent, Ranger.”

“Ah, but you sound like you. That’s a bonus.”

“Is it?”

Jake closed the door to the cramped cabin, walking over and ducking under the bunk above them to take a seat next to Hermann. He very much wanted to shove the man away from him, demand that they go get Newton _right now_ , and take care of—

“This is a shit show, innit?” Jake asked casually, looking down at the clasped hands between his knees. Hermann opened his mouth to agree, or argue, or _some_ thing, when Jake just laughed and pointed at the ice bag. “Can’t believe he got you like that. How’s it feel?”

“Like I’ve been beamed in the head by a lead pipe.” Hermann sighed and pressed the bag against his head. “I hate to say, this, Ranger.”

“Jake.”

“Yes. But I…uh…what….” Hermann sighed again. He felt like so much was pushing down on his shoulders that he wouldn’t breathe right again. “Is he safe?”

Without permission, as it would surely have been a stern “no,” Jake reached out and clapped Hermann on the back. The shock of the gesture vibrated quickly up his eye and rattled around in the growing bruise, releasing another puff of indignant air from his lungs. Jake wasn’t shaken off as much as Hermann would have liked. He simply gripped the scientist’s arm, a quick one-two pump of his hand, before he let go. That was not an answer. But it was. And Hermann simply looked down at his shoes to feel miserable and ill.

“I want to see him.”

“You will, mate. Nothing stopping you.”

“Nothing…you—”

“No,” said Jake simply, quietly. “No, we ain’t.”

Hermann rocked to the left, looking miserable, uncomfortable, put out. Looking desperate and sad. Or dizzy. Or ill. Or certainly feeling all those things and probably looking like a bloke who had a welt the size of an ostrich egg blooming over his eye and just losing his balance for no reason.

Something.

He very much wanted to cry, if he was honest, but not that either.

Something.

\---

**Three Hours to Finding San**

Newton had been right. As had Hermann, even though he was not nearly as vocal about it. There was simply nothing to be done while they sailed across the ocean towards their destination. Hermann asked around about getting a tablet to read something—at this point, he’d take a Harlequin novel if it meant he could occupy his mind instead of focusing on the drone of the engines and the churning of waves. Anything. But there was nothing to be done or, at the very least, nobody would hand anything over to him. Fair enough. He wasn’t a man of much authority. And his phone had died sometime around noon, so, his fault, really, for being so bloody unprepared.

He found his way back up in the observation room with Nate. He greeted Hermann pleasantly enough, which was more of a distant hello over his shoulder before he turned to watch the horizon again. He was leaning against the console, one hand on his hip, the rest of him taught, like he was ready for a fight. Really? From Hermann of all people.

“D’you mind if I sit down here again?” Hermann asked politely enough, feeling it was rude to intrude, though he hardly knew why he was worried about that anyways. The man had intruded on his flat with Newton and taken them from their home for this goose chase. Still, “manners maketh man” and all that nonsense. He couldn’t stop himself if he tried. When Nate looked back again and nodded at any of the bench seats, Hermann tipped his head slightly and muttered a quick, “thank you.”

“So,” said Nate after a time, turning a hard, ruggedly-squinting face back on Hermann. “Where’s the other one?”

“The ‘other one?’” Hermann asked, unamused. “I could say the same about your partners.”

Nate shifted again, relieving pressure on one foot, putting it all on the other as he leaned again. Did he think it made him look cool? It did, but that should hardly be the point. He cleared his throat and gave a short nod.

“Point taken, Doc,” he answered with a shadow of a laugh. An almost-smile. “I suppose they’re ‘making up.’” Nate sucked his bottom lip in between his teeth and gnawed it. “I guess that’s…fair. Still. _Do_ you know what Newt’s up to?”

“I’m sure he’s currently elbow deep in your engine room, trying to improve your combustion. Something or other,” Hermann said absently.

He glanced out on the deck just to make sure Newton wasn’t actively starting a game of sorts with the cadets like he had threatened before. But, no, Newton likely was, truly, tinkering down in the engines. It would occupy him for, perhaps, another thirty minutes before he surfaced again.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t break anything,” Nate said quietly.

There was another moment of lingering silence between them. Hermann was no fool to the fact that he could be a little…off-putting to people. His social skills were lacking and while he had improved over the years—yes, _fine_ , perhaps from some perfunctory admonition that he had garnered a _few_ personality traits from Newton—he was hardly the center of attention. Not in a good way, at least. And Nate, while not his fault, did play into that timeless dynamic of the chiseled jock against the whip-thin nerd. Hermann couldn’t help a slight comparison to his bullies of his youth, though he was over such “trauma.”

Still. He wished, not for the first time, not for the last either, that Newton was next to him to help carry on the conversation.

“How does—”

“We’re making—”

The two had spoken over each other and quickly ground to a rocky halt. Hermann worked his jaw into a tight snap while Nate inspected the horizon again.

“I’m terribly sorry I—”

“I didn’t mean—”

Another silence. Another awkward pause. Hermann decided to keep his mouth shut and Nate did too, for a time, before he stretched his neck out, waiting for Hermann to pipe up. Not bloody likely. He did, however, turn his attention to Nate to make him understand he was there. He was listening. He was trying very hard to participate.

“If you….” Nate nodded, pointing back at the screen. “I was just saying, we’re making good time. So. If your boy…Newton. If Newt doesn’t, uh, if he doesn’t break anything. In the engines. We should be getting to his, little—”

“I do understand this is awkward, Ranger Lambert, but, please,” Hermann said slowly. Blinking slowly. Moving slowly. Stretching his words out to help this poor man understand, but also because when he was irritated he became a _little_ condescending. “This ‘beating around the bush’ nonsense is getting us nowhere.”

“Yeah,” Nate said, snarling his nose not at Hermann, or perhaps not directly at him. Almost entirely to whatever internal monologue he was having. “You’re right, Doc. It’s just…awkward. Is the right way to put it. Exactly.”

Nate turned back to the display, watching San swimming with a terrifying grace across the ocean floor. Like he was racing up to meet them.

“Sorry,” Nate added quietly. “For…I guess the boat. And the apartment. And….”

“It’s alright,” Hermann answered, and let his eyes roam back to the ocean. Deep. Endless. Almost entirely unknowable. God, he hated it. “Hardly entirely your fault, Ranger Lambert.”

He didn’t agree. He didn’t disagree either. Nate just stood there, and let the engines work, despite one Newton Geiszler likely tinkering within them against all better judgement.

\---

Jake was being damnably helpful, if Hermann were honest. He offered his arm, letting Hermann instead stagger from the bed to the hallway against all better judgement. He was there to grab him before he fell to his face, backing up when Hermann cursed and shoved him away.

“I am _fine_ , Ranger Pentecost,” Hermann snapped, tugging his shirt down towards his belt.

“Yeah, fine. Don’t mean you can’t use a little help there, Doc,” Jake answered next to him. “You wanna get to Newt in one piece, don’t you?”

_Yes_. Bloody hell, he did, of course. The bastard. He loved him too much to let his pride get the better of him. At least for this.

“Then let me help, ya stubborn git.”

Hermann’s ears went pink as he realized he had said that out loud, and darted his tongue nervously over his lips.

“Yeah, get over it, man,” said Jake, taking more of Hermann’s weight. “We already been knowin’, mate. You’re both all honeymoonin’ over each other. It’s gross.”

“Yes, thank you, Ranger,” Hermann said, his voice gravelly with a quiet rage. “I think that’s quite enough.”

“Hey, you went to started it all, man. You run your mouth off….”

Jake could talk as much as Newton, it seemed, and went on and on in his little odd tangent. Hermann argued points. Minutely and only when they came up and only because he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to be the stoic silent type, but that dream had gone out about two months after he first started working with Newton. No time to change back.

“…and so, I dunno, but it was kinda nice that she, like, accepted it, I guess,” Jake was saying, still rambling. Hermann realized he had missed most of it, nodding towards the end.

“Ah. Well. Yes. Quite.” He blushed harder, embarrassed to be thrown off guard like this.

“You’re so stuck up, Gottlieb,” Jake said with mock annoyance. “Good thing I’m such a handsome and friendly bloke, or we’d have problems.”

“Would we now?”

“Oh, I bet.”

Hermann only rolled his eyes as they walked down the damnably long hallway, stretching down the entire length of the ship. It was probably a good thing that Jake was there to keep him upright.

\---

**One Hour to Finding San**

Dinner was hardly any better than lunch. And, this time, there were others with them in the galley. The cadets had come in to escape the setting sun and shove nutrients into their mouths, which they hardly stopped yapping. It seemed they were quiet happy to gossip about literally anything. Hermann could hardly keep up. Not that he particularly wanted to. He was enjoying a moment where Newton had forced himself to sit again, leaning in close and dropping his head against Hermann’s shoulder. He looked almost sleepy, even with a streak of black grease cut across his forehead and his hair tousled into a mess.

“How was the engine room?” Hermann asked conversationally.

“A real goddamn mess, Herms,” Newton answered quietly, hardly touching his MRE. Understandable, really, given that it was nearly indigestible garbage. He looped an arm lazily in around Hermann’s, sighing softly into his neck. “How was, uh…?”

“Observation deck?” Hermann laughed, squeezing Newton’s arm. “Dull. I was up there for awhile with Ranger Lambert. It seems we do not have much in common.”

“Yeah? Not ready for that whole….” Newton made vague gestures and laughed to himself.

“Yes. I’m sure. Whatever _that_ is,” Hermann answered. He kissed Newton’s head, glad to see him unwinding. Or, at the very least, coming down from his mad dash energy throughout the day. “Would you like to retire to a cabin for a bit?”

“Nah. Don’t try and put me in a time-out, Herms.”

“I hardly think that’s what I was doing.”

“No, but I know, dude. Just.” Newton sighed, nuzzling in and closing his eyes. “Let me rest here for, like, a minute. I wanna join you up on the deck. Should be, like…y’know…getting….”

Newton’s words died off as he started to drift off. Hermann could feel him snoring lightly, surprised at how quickly he had seemed to shut off. He sat still, setting down the last half of his meal, and let Newton use him as an impromptu napping stand, as it were. He smiled at nothing, simply enjoying the moment.

Though, of course, it could hardly last. The ship rocked, and Newton snorted awake, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Holy shit, Herms, did I just rack out?” He stretched, smiling sleepily up at Hermann. “Oh, sorry dude, I just started drooling apparently. I didn’t get any on you, did I?”

“No,” Hermann said, disappointed that he jolted awake so quickly. “No, you’re fine. It’s fine, Newton.”

“This is so….” Newton let his head flop back again, groaning at the ceiling. Before Hermann could ask him to elaborate, he spit out the word, “ _Boring_.”

“You are not wrong there,” Hermann said with a bitter laugh.

Newton sat up again and took his hand, kissing his knuckles as he looked up at him through those terribly dark, terribly attractive eyelashes.

“I know, dude. It’s sucked since—”

“Dr. Gottlieb? Dr. Geiszler? We require your presence,” came Ranger Reyes’ voice across an old, rusty-looking speaker stamped into the wall above the sink. Hermann and Newton straightened their backs and looked at each other. There was the promise of good news or terrible news in that request and only one way to find out.

\---

The sound of “Days Like This” was muffled through the walls, drifting into the hallway the closer they got to the hold. There was something particularly unsettling about the tune, slipping out to them like the soundtrack to a terrible secret. Although, it was no secret. Hardly that. Hermann knew exactly what was in that room and if he wasn’t so stubborn, he would have gripped Jake’s arm tightly and demanded they turn around. That he did not want to face this just yet. But he would. He had to. He had promised Newton and that was something he would never break.

“You alright?” Jake asked.

Hermann realized he had stopped moving forward. His knuckles were white on his cane and he was leaning so far forward, his back a terrible hunch. He closed his eyes and listened to the music, reminiscing of a time Newton would play it in the lab. This, being far milder than some of his other selections, was often something they fell asleep to when they crashed on the couch in their k-science lab, passing out from exhaustion. Simple days of scrambling together to stop the apocalypse. Hermann recalled there were a few times he had tangled his arms around Newton and told himself it was simply because he was tired. That he was using him for warmth and perhaps a mild form of comfort, but nothing beyond platonically sharing a space together. At best. And that he definitely didn’t dream of brushing down his hair with his fingertips and kissing his forehead just so when he saw him sleepily draped over his chest. Never. Not once.

There was no point to run from this. They still had an unbearable amount of time to sail back. There was much to be done. There was time, so much of it. So much of it, he could still walk away and think. And dread. And drive himself mad with his own thoughts. Hermann pushed open the door all the same.

\---

**Two Minutes to Finding San**

The Rangers had sent out the command: _all hands on deck_. Almost thrilling to see them react, setting up the winch and the net system that would be used to drag San to the boat where they would try and dart the poor creature with some of the sedative that Newton had specifically requested. Hermann stood by the console, watching them fret on the water. Nate and Jake were among them, barking out orders, making sure the lines were all correct and that Newton did not toss anybody overboard in his excitement. Which, of course, left Ranger Reyes and Hermann in the observation deck.

The readout looked nightmarishly big now that they were practically atop him. Hermann kept looking at the hologram, his stomach curdling at the sight of that strange, terrifying, beautiful _thing_ that Newton had helped create swimming with hardly any care across the ocean floor.

“Time to deploy,” Ranger Reyes said casually. “You think we’re ready, Dr. Gottlieb?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Hermann answered, his palms sweating as he watched Jules and the display, his eyes flicking down to Newton again and again and again, just to make sure he was there. “We’ll know better once we have the poor thing, won’t we?”

“And have we determined what to do with said thing?” Jules asked, glancing over with a knowing smile.

Hermann worked his tongue over his bottom lip again, pulling it up and gnawing on it as he looked at the display. At Newton. At the water. “Yes, Ranger Reyes. It is imperative that we destroy it.”

Jules nodded, pushing controls that helped slow the boat down, short of deploying an actual anchor. Hermann did not pretend to know exactly how the boat worked, letting Reyes keep at the controls.

“I agree,” she said, dialing something onto the hologram. “I hope everyone else does, too.”

There was already some commotion out on the deck, a few cadets racing back and forth while Newton shouted something. He was leaning over the railing, looking very much like he was about to jump off the boat and swim down to grab his creation. _Not his creation_ , Hermann had to remind himself. Not entirely, at least. Not willingly, he had to hope.

Jules was on a private channel with Nate and Jake, relaying information to them as they barked out their orders to the cadets. The net sank into the brine, the boat listing along, not fully dead, but not chugging at the impressive speed it had earlier. Hermann gulped painfully, watching the waves lap up the side and Newton, bless him, that idiot, that beautiful, brilliant idiot, bent over the side with unparalleled glee.

“Do be careful, you bastard,” Hermann whispered.

And then the boat lurched dangerously to the side, threatening to tip them over. Hermann thought, for a brief, moment, that he was going to die. He sailed into the glass divider, cracking his head against it, his cane clattering away from him. He almost crumpled on the spot, losing his vision. Losing sight of the cadets. Of Jake and Lambert. Worse than that, he thought Newton had lost his grip and was gone.

“Dr. Gottlieb!” Jules yelled from the console, gripping onto it for dear life, throwing switches for the boat while the cadets did their work. “You alright over there?”

Hermann mumbled some pathetic response, touching his head. Blood. Dear God. Dear God, _Newton_. The boat tipped again, throwing him clear across the other side, where he smashed with little grace against the other set of benches. It did not seem that staying awake was becoming a priority anymore. But he had to be certain. He shoved up to his knees, feeling weak and shaky, feeling someone’s hand on his shoulder and shouting something far away. But he pushed up enough in time to see the dark shape appear just under the surface of the water, an arm reaching to tear at the netting as the mechanism strained to drag it in. He saw Newton gripping onto the railing for dear life.

Oh, Newton. Thank God.

\---

Oh, Newton.

Hermann stood in the doorway, terrified at the sight of the tank, of course, of the creature swimming lazily inside it, of _course_. There was just enough room for it to turn back and forth, to stretch its limbs to their limit if it truly wanted to. But it wasn’t. It was practically laying in the corner, a hand casually pressed up to the glass, something about it twitching in time to the music that was pumping into the water by that speaker system that was insisted upon.

And there, of course. Pressed up against the glass like a schoolboy on a trip to the aquarium. He had his hand on the glass too, right over the massive palm of his…not _offspring_. Hermann refused to call it that, same as Newton did. But it was unmistakably there. And those eyes. Soft, frightening blue. So very much Newton’s eyes. It was damn near heart breaking.

Hermann cleared his throat and stepped into the room just as the song tapered off and started up on another, a gentle strum of a guitar passed down through the years and kept on that insipid little iPod that Newton had managed to keep intact. Somehow. Through it all.

Hermann limped up beside Newton and looked at him without touching him. He was afraid of what the reaction might be. The man looked transfixed. Worse than that. Worse than that, he looked…in love.

“Oh, Newton,” Hermann whispered, a strange mixture of relieved and terrified and hurt. “Newton, we—”

“We found him, dude,” Newton said quietly, finally looking over at Hermann. And Hermann could just see the tear tracks on his face. But he was smiling. Was that worse? Was that terrible turning his stomach from the sea sickness or the obvious concussion, or this? He reached out, but Newton just turned away, gently tapping the glass. “We found him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I seriously appreciate ever single one of you who takes the time read this weird little adventure I'm putting them on. I love it and I'm just glad if I entertain you in any way.


	14. I Know What I Said

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We all know Hermann has a concussion. So, uh...they should take care of that? They should take care of that!

It was remarkably stupid that Hermann slept through what was so obviously a concussion. Surely, if there was anyone aboard with a modicum of medical training, they would have looked after that sooner. More so given that he was currently violently ill in the toilet, trying to ignore the unsteady rocking of the ship beneath them.

Bloody storm.

Bloody ship.

Bloody bastard in that bloody tank.

Bloody miserable. Terrible. Hang them all! Oh, just let him die in peace, please. Please, restful slumber. Nothing. It would be bliss. Oh, dramatic, yes, but the sentiment was _real_. Quite the mood.

Hermann moaned pathetically into the basin, his cane clacking back and forth beside him. He predicted they had at least five hours before they were back at the naval base. While he had gone on to inspect the tank and their new… _specimen_ , the seasickness had decided to rear its ugly head and he had wandered off to find somewhere to relieve himself. Nobody seemed to mind. Nobody deemed it prudent to check on him, at least, which would have irked him more if it weren’t so late and the circumstances being what they were. Five more hours. Well, was that so long? Hermann wondered if he could even make it, or if it was wise to return just yet. This whole venture had been a disaster from one step to the next and he very much wanted it to be over. But not. Because Newton….

Hermann turned and promptly threw up again, gagging after nothing decided to come up, not even the threat of bile. He was empty, damn it. Leave him be! His head hurt tremendously, and he just wanted to close his eyes and let this all go away. That was, again, a decidedly bad idea.

There was another little roll of the ocean beneath them, pushing Hermann back against the wall. Another time and he would have found the floor revolting, crawling away from the toilet like the whole thing had offended him and his sense of cleanliness. Now, he barely noticed it, cursing angry, filthy things to himself as he wished for something to just open beneath him and swallow him whole.

The door swung open instead. He hardly heard it, but the voice that accompanied the presence had him grimacing despite himself.

“Holy _shit_ , dude. What happened?”

Oh. So _now_ he’s decided to pay attention. Hermann rolled his head away only to have it caught by Newton’s hand, gentle fingers prizing an eye open and staring intently into his soul. More likely his pupil, checking reaction times to the dilation, but, still. The intimacy was there. Or, perhaps more likely, Hermann simply imagined it.

“We gotta get you up.”

“No,” Hermann answered back, letting every miserable note of anger sing out through his reply. “Why’re you _here_?”

“Why? Jesus, Hermann.” There were surprisingly strong arms hooked underneath his own, hoisting him up at least enough for him to sit on the toilet bowl’s lid. He didn’t think that this was much better. “Okay, no. Nope. I’m gonna need to get some of those kids to help me.”

“Aren’t you…?” Oh Lord, everything had that ugly purple tint to it as he threatened to slide off. It was like being inebriated, but half the fun. It leapt straight to being sick and a little feverish and just God awful, truly. “San,” Hermann added, hoping his intentions were perhaps a little clearer.

“Yeah?” Newton crouched in front of him, kneeling between Hermann’s knees. “San’s not going anywhere.” Hermann groaned again, rolling his head back in dismay. “Okay. So, totally a concussion.”

“Yes, we had…we had… _ohhh_ …we had figured…that much. Out,” Hermann eventually spit out, brushing Newton’s hand off his face. “Please. Just. I feel terribly sick.”

“I bet you do,” Newton said with a friendly sort’ve laugh that didn’t belong to the moment. But it was teasing and affectionate and bristled under Hermann’s skin exactly like his little jibes might when they had been working together in their lab all those years ago. Simpler times, really. Frantic and messy and stressful, of course, because they were trying to stop the damn Apocalypse, but…simpler. He wanted to smack Newton for making him feel nostalgic at a time like this. “Listen, this isn’t, like, a military vessel or anything, but. I found a little wannabe medical closet, uh, essentially, while I was…you know.”

“Running about?”

“I know you wanna say ‘like a chicken with it’s head cut off,’ Herms. But, yeah. Basically. Yes.” Newton very carefully pushed some sweaty locks of hair out of Hermann’s eyes, ignoring the way he jerked his head away from the touch. “Easy, buddy. We’re going to take care of you.”

“Who’s _we_?” Hermann asked with bitter vitriol and anger laced throughout. Far more sinister than he had imagined himself capable of.

“Royal ‘we’, Herms. You know.” Newton laughed, but his eyes shifted, just a little, a sad veil dropping over them before he straightened himself up.

“Don’t do that,” Hermann moaned.

“Do what, man?”

“Don’t _hide_ yourself.” Hermann swallowed, rolling his eyes to the back of his head. He couldn’t be sick. He had nothing left to be sick. He needed a moment to breathe and settle and Newton fussed again, trying to get Hermann to stand, but Hermann simply gripped Newton’s arms and forced him to stay. “Don’t.”

“I’m not…I’m just trying to help you get—”

“Don’t,” Hermann said again, and his voice broke this time, drawing Newton to his chest.

It was very sweet that Newton complied easily. He could have struggled, but, instead, he came forward and let Hermann wrap his arms around his neck, cradling his face up against his chest. Hermann breathed hard, too hard, perhaps, something wet and awful threatening to spill from him. He stroked down Newton’s hair and ignored the gentle galloping sway of the ship beneath them.

“Hermann?”

Newton’s voice was muffled by the layers of clothing, which included a sleeveless undershirt, a t-shirt, a buttoned shirt, a sweater vest, a cardigan, and a suit jacket. They both had the same thought while layering up that, while Newton was protecting himself from prying eyes, Hermann was simply protecting himself from the elements, and how fantastically similar that was.

“Hermann, you gotta….” Newton tapped Hermann’s arm. “Gotta let me up.”

“I don’t want to,” Hermann grumbled, petulant as ever.

At least Newton laughed. And if Hermann didn’t look at him or think about it too much, he could pretend it was the genuine article too. That there was nothing preventing him from Newton showing him everything. Everything. Honestly. Openly. Without reservation or fear or….

But it was difficult to keep a squid-armed hold of the man. Hermann loosened his grip and Newton practically popped up like some comical weasel toy, looking disheveled but quite himself, honestly. He always looked better with that little unruly pattern of his hair and that dark stubble on his cheek and oh, well, Hermann had hit his head pretty hard, so he could be forgiven for staring like a love-drunk idiot, he supposed. Newton cracked another smile, wider and brighter than ever, as he carefully took Hermann’s hands off his face.

“You ready to stand?”

“No,” Hermann answered honestly.

Thankfully, Newton simply slid down and settled against the wall, letting his feet stick out so he would not give himself a dead-leg. He smiled, resting one hand on Hermann’s knee, the other in his lap.

“It’s been rough, huh?”

“That’s a word for it,” Hermann answered, leaning heavily on one of his thighs, his hand sliding carefully over to capture Newton’s and squeeze his fingers.

“You look like shit, dude,” Newton said and only because it was with that convincing honesty did Hermann laugh gently to himself. He reached up and touched the sore spot on his brow.

“I’m sure I do, darling.”

“Well. We’ll get you fixed up.” Newton grinned, twitching his foot in something approximating a 4/4 tempo. “We’ll get this all fixed up and then you can help me get to Russia.”

“Russia?” Hermann’s hand stopped squeezing, affording him a curious look from Newton. “What in the world are we going to do in Russia?”

“Well,” Newton answered slowly, the word crawling out of him in a strained, almost screechy note. “We gotta go check out that lab. I know the facility was destroyed by Jake and Nate, but a _pparent_ ly, I was keeping a lab there and I kinda want to see what I had.”

\---

_And who I was keeping that lab with, obviously._

\---

Hermann nodded slowly, stretching his jaw out and snapping it back shut. “I…suppose we could,” he answered, resuming his soothing thumb-circling across Newton’s callused hand. “But only after we take care of San.”

“Take care…?” Newton turned his hand over and gripped Hermann’s knee. “Oh, sure, buddy. Yeah. We’ll take care of him.”

“I’m very curious to know what you think ‘taking care of’ means in this situation.”

Hermann slid his fingers up and taking a hold of Newton’s wrist in the event he wanted to pull away and escape again. A cruel gesture, perhaps, to remind him of being strapped down, but Hermann very much could not be left alone in the toilets again and he needed Newton. Absolutely.

There was another drawn out sound from Newton as he mulled over his choice of words.

“Well…”

“Newton, _please_.”

Hermann did not like the fact that Newton squirmed, beginning to tug back, beginning to avoid eye contact and draw his knee up and prepare to rise from the floor. The man could very easily run out of here and Hermann was in no condition to chase after him. Follow him, perhaps, but only with the grace and gait and mindless tenacity of one of the undead. And neither of them would enjoy that.

“I think we should study him,” Newton finally blurted out. His hand slipped completely from Hermann’s grip and was drawn up tight to his chest, palm flat over the mark that only Hermann seemed to know about. “I think. I think it’s stupid to destroy him now that we have him and, I mean, as long as we can keep him secured at a facility, it’s…it’s a waste of potential.”

“Potential? Newton!” Hermann reached forward, misjudging the distance and nearly toppling off the toilet seat. Newton, thankfully, rushed to catch him, steadying him. It was not entirely gentlemanly that Hermann used the opportunity to grip Newton’s shoulders and keep him close. He could apologize later for the terrible state he was in and the vomit on his tongue. “You told me specifically that that….” It would be too hurtful to say “ _thing_ ,” so he avoided it. “You told me that San could open the Breach similarly to how the Precursors programmed the Kaiju-infected Jaegers to open the Breach. That San would open up micro tears that could slip under our detection software until it was too late and we had an opening large enough to send _armies_ of Kaiju through.”

“Yeah, I _know_ what I said, Hermann. I’m not…I know what I said!” Newton didn’t pull back, thank God, but he still refused to meet Hermann’s eye. “I know. But I still don’t think we should destroy it yet. If I can…If we can get a PONS Unit, we can—”

Hermann never thought he would strike the man. Yes, he toyed with the fantasy a few times during some exceptionally heated debates, but it was a comical knee-jerk reaction at _best_ , not an actual tool he had ready in his belt. His hand stung. The silence and the look on Newton’s face stung far worse.

“Oh. Oh please,” Hermann whispered, his voice shaky and soft as he gripped Newton’s shirt, only to have his hands carefully extracted and pushed away. Newton rose, tugging his shirt down, the sleeves straightened out, the collar adjusted and, finally, pushing back phantom frames again. “Newton? Please, I—”

“It’s okay,” Newton said steadily, a quick sniffle belying his resolve. “Kinda…got a little outta hand there, didn’t it?”

He smiled and, Lord, that was a knife in Hermann’s chest.

“Newt—”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. You think you’re ready to stand for me yet?” When Hermann didn’t answer, Newton bent down and grabbed his cane, pushing it into his hand. “Come on. We can see if they have anything for your head.”

Hermann reached out and grabbed a fistful of Newton’s shirt, holding onto it tightly. He shook, certain that he had undone everything, that he had ruined everything. That for all the promises he made to protect and care and love, he had just destroyed it all for a bit of rage and confusion and hurt. A moment. A terrible, lingering, awful moment. Hermann bent his head and realized quickly that his entire skull felt like was throbbing because he was squeezing his eyes shut so tightly, hot tears falling. When he felt Newton’s fingers slide so carefully over his shoulders and down his back, Hermann let out a sound, both relief and shame and simply because he needed to breathe again, the poor fool.

“This has been…a really shitty day,” Newton whispered, crouching down again to meet Hermann’s gaze. He cupped Hermann’s face, carefully kissing one cheek, and then the other. “You know?”

It was too kind. It was too kind of him, actually. Newton stayed close, even though Hermann was certain the man was done with him now. He swallowed, listening to Newton ask him again, “You know?” Hermann couldn’t very well answer right now, so he nodded and tried to laugh it off. A pathetic attempt. Newton was far better at putting on a brave face than he was.

“Can I take you to their little piss-poor excuse for a medical bay? Huh?” Newton, wiped under Hermann’s eyes, tilting his head to get closer. “Can you let me do that for you?” Another nod of his head, another sad, wet sound. How embarrassing. “Okay. You know, I may have been doing some serious cross fit there for a while, but my muscles are all shit. You’re going to have help, okay?”

“Yes,” Hermann answered, still trembling terribly.

He wished he would just stop that already, thank you, but he could not deny that the awful and sudden panic that had threatened to stop his heart was still burning through his veins. He gripped his cane anyways.

“And I don’t got any, like.” Newton padded his pockets at his hips, his chest, and then made a pleased sound as he remembered something. “Pardon me,” he said politely enough as he reached into Hermann’s pocket and pulled out his handkerchief. “Okay, yeah, fine. It’s good that you carry this around. Even if it totally makes you a grandpa.”

“It’s useful,” Hermann croaked.

“Yeah, it’s useful,” Newton said, unfolding the cloth and taking a corner to wipe Hermann’s face. “So useful. So old fashioned.”

“Says the man…with an iPod…from 2015.”

“Uh, yeah. But that’s _vintage_ , dude,” Newton said and worked his way under Hermann’s arm to support him. “Alright. Left foot, right foot, you remember? Your head not too banged up for that?”

“Please,” Hermann said with that grumble of some of his vitriol. It was silly, useless banter, but it helped. It helped so much. He may be terrified of what they were going to face but, right now, God help him, Newton was truly doing his best.

\---

Okay, so, yes. Bringing up the PONs was a mistake. Didn’t think he had it in him to enact, like, violence or anything. Although, come on. The elevator at Shao’s? Honestly, _hot_. But now is not the time. And there was no fucking way you are going to leave his side right now.

Ideally, there should be a bunch of tests happening. A full neurological examination of vision, hearing, balance, coordination, reflexes, memory, concentration, yadda yadda yadda. Ideally, truly, brain imaging from a CT scan would just be great. X-ray to make sure there was no fracture in his skull because, just from what you’ve heard, he _slammed_ into the Plexiglas like a _rag_ doll. God, poor beautiful bastard. If kissing it better actually worked, you would be making out with him immediately.

So, until any of those scans can be done, observation is absolutely what you’re doing. And it was so stupid, so fucking _stupid_ to stay away from him for as long as you did, man! Why? Why, because standing in front of San’s tank just sucked you right in, hypnotized by the sight of it? It was. Well. Well, seeing a kaiju, even a hybrid like that, up close? Up close and personal? And it _wasn’t_ attacking you or a city? It was just… Well. So…so calming, actually. Like, the struggle, the terror, the weird crawling sensations all just disappeared when you saw him exactly like you remembered him, looking up in awe at you. The Creator. The Father. The Holy shit, Hermann almost fell, pay attention. This boat? Piece of shit, actually.

Anyways, yes. Observation. Rest. Bed rest if they could force him to, which was so honestly unfair because Hermann used to go crazy when he had to rest. Like, okay, remember that time when he had walking pneumonia? Or, better yet, that one time he had managed to fracture his actual goddamn ankle? He gets so agitated being forced to lie still. You need to figure out a game plan to keep him entertained. Maybe these Aussie Aussie Aussies (oi oi oi) had a few cool medical journals he could borrow and read with or, like, a surprising collection of Godzilla flicks. Wouldn’t that be great? Something. Because you have to take care of him. Because you love him. And it will totally suck; Hermann is such a bastard sometimes. God, you love him even more because of that, don’t you? You do. The man slaps you and you’re hurt, obviously, but, uh. Kinda hot? Kinda…okay stop.

No.

Take care of Hermann. Get him better. Get him healthy enough he can really bludgeon you with that cane if he _really_ wants to. And then. Then. Russia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I completely and truthfully forgot that there had been that facility Mako found in Russia that got destroyed before they were able to look into it, so it doesn't seem that far fetched that there might be a second smaller facility that Newton was using to, uh, make San? Yes. That is my reasoning, thank you (cannon? What cannon? I don't know anything about cannon material).
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	15. That's Just My Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermann is put on bed rest as they discuss what needs to be done with San. 
> 
> And, what's this? A very tiny Lamcost moment? Just for you? You bet!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, sorry about the delay. I was on vacation for a week and it was my birthday (woop woop!) But I'm back and getting into the swing of things again!

Nobody knows what to do.

The boat comes in sometime close to noon, the sun overhead stippled through the gray clouds. Hermann can’t help but think fondly of _rainy seasons_ back at LOCCENT in Hong Kong. The miserable cold, the aches in his joints that felt like rubbery needles, the incessant wet. And, yes, he did mean fondly for all of that. For all of that, because it was in their shared lab, fighting budget cuts, fighting each other, fighting the elements to save the whole bloody world. When it was them. And it’s them now. And that’s almost perfect.

Still.

Nobody knows what to do.

Especially about San.

Higher ups have been called, a few colleagues of Dr. Geiszler and Dr. Gottlieb back in their Shatterdome days consulted without giving the complete history of the subject they were being questioned on. Newton _was_ the premier specialist on kaiju xenobiology. He was _the guy_. But he was also standing firmly in the “prisoner” territory of the PPDC lineup. It made it difficult for anyone with authority to take his suggestions at face value. The man may very well be walking and talking under the cloudy skies, but he had an invisible leash that wouldn’t let him slip away. He had a more physical leash too, come to think of it.

Hermann was propped up on a stiff medical gurney, a copy of a beaten National Geographic splayed out across his lap. He was exhausted. Firm land and proper care had done wonders, of course, but he was exhausted down to the molecular level. Everything was too much. Everything demanded so much energy and he thought he could sleep forever if he was given the chance. Except that while his muscles were reduced to a semi-warm goo, his mind was buzzing with too many ideas, worrying levels of thought overlapping worrying dreams overlapping worrying worst case scenarios of Newton, primarily, atop a mega-skyscraper as a fully developed and surprisingly Kaiju-sized San tore through the city with nobody to stop them. No Jaeger pilots. No last hurrah triumph. A swatch of destruction behind him more fiery and more fierce than could ever realistically exist, but his brain wasn’t going for realistic. It was going for the worst. And it delivered.

The little magazine on the migration patterns of North American wolves didn’t stand a chance at holding his attention. He tried. He failed. He nearly tossed the magazine away from him in frustration but decided that outburst was more Newton than himself and gripped the edges of the pages to keep it firmly in his lap.

He was left alone for all of two hours and he was already deciding how best to escape the bed, upend it in a dramatic fashion, and haul himself up to the top deck so he could find someone and throttle them. For no other thrill than human interaction.

It _was_ a bit pathetic.

However, at the end of the two hours in isolation—a misnomer, given that there were medical techs around the area and other people coming and going beyond the feeble curtain drawn up around his bed—someone finally came down to take the empty seat beside him. Newton slumped, holding his head in his hand as he studied the back of his eyelids, his leg bouncing away. He was also exhausted. It was becoming something of the human condition at this point. Hermann hypothesized that there wasn’t a well-rested person left on the planet and this was their final suffering after eradicating the Kaiju a second time.

Newton sighed, and the sound was both music and torture because he had only wanted Newton to come back and because he sounded so worn down.

“What happened?” Hermann asked softly.

“I don’t even know,” Newton said, scrubbing his eyebrow back and forth, his eyes still firmly shut. “It’s like talking to circus animals. They’re looking for direction while wondering if they can eat you alive, you know? Half of them want to destroy him. Half of them want to study him. Half of them want me locked back up and, you know what, I don’t even know if I can blame them anymore.”

“Your math isn’t adding up,” Hermann said, a shadow of a smile in place.

When Newton didn’t resort to some quick quip, Hermann leaned over and ran his fingers through Newton’s slightly damp hair. The man melted in increments, leaning forward until his forehead met the mattress. He mumbled something and Hermann pet him now with both hands, shifting forward and tilting his head so the ear _not_ covered by medical gauze and tape was angled towards him.

“What was that?”

“Your bed’s a sheetrock,” Newton mumbled louder, enough to be heard this time.

“It’s not ideal.” Hermann laughed, leaning back so Newton could sit up. “Join me up here if you like.”

“It’s small.”

“It is.”

“And you’ve got wires all over you.”

“I have a single IV, Newton.”

“And—”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Newton mumbled a few soft consonants again as he pushed himself up onto the bed. Hermann held his arm up, giving Newton room to cuddle in and bury his head down against Hermann’s chest. It was cramped. Newton had to effectively entwine their legs, holding onto the opposite side of the mattress so he didn’t tumble off suddenly. And he held still again when Hermann lowered his arm, the IV still tacked and taped into place. He was lying on Hermann’s temporary blind side, the bandage wrapped around his head covering both ear and eye and scalp. Not ideal, but _apparently_ , he had injured himself more than he previously assumed. He was feeling better. Not great, but better. More so now that Newton was with him again.

“What do you want to do, Newton?” Hermann asked, holding onto him so he wouldn’t ever worry he would fall off.

Newton tilted his head up, blinking a few times as a small smile crept up onto his face.

“No, not that,” Hermann said, rolling his eyes. “I meant what do you want to do about San?”

“I’m just saying. Semi-public is _totally_ a kink I would—”

“No,” Hermann said more firmly, pinching Newton’s arm. “Not right now, at least.”

“At least?” Newton tucked that nugget away, wiggling in closer somehow. It earned him another pinch and Newton yelped, pulling his arm, sleeve and all, away from Hermann’s grip. “Okay! Okay, Hermann, stop.”

They laid there for a time, listening to the low vibrancy of people walking outside the curtains and the techno beeps of the machine nearby. Almost comforting. More annoying than anything.  Hermann’s heartrate ticked up just a bit before he tried to ask Newton again.

“What do you want to do about San?”

Newton groaned, and the sound rumbled pleasantly against Hermann’s chest. He made a slight fist, knocking it against Hermann’s ribcage.

“Can we not worry about that right now?”

“It’s not like we have much else to do.”

“Yes, we do,” Newton answered, sitting up.

“We do?”

“Yes!”

“Newton. I’m not in the mood for—”

Newton hip-checked Hermann, wiggling him over on the mattress so he could lie beside him better. “Get your mind out of the _gutter_ , Herms.” Hermann scoffed, making as much room as he could muster while Newton dug into his pocket. Hermann expected him to pull out his iPod, but that was still hooked up to the tank with the kaiju-hybrid. An interesting technique to keep it subdued, he was sure. No, instead, Newton pulled out a borrowed phone, unlocking it as he swiped up a screen he had idling from earlier. He set the phone down and punched up the short hologram feature so that a map illuminated the space in front of them.

“Who let you—”

“Jules,” Newton answered, zooming in on the coastline on Russia. “You know, she can be helpful when she’s not, like, actively trying to restrain herself from punching me in the face.”

“You do tend to be a little antagonizing.”

“That’s just my thing, Herms. That’s my _thing_ , man.”

Hermann bit his lip shut, getting comfortable with Newton’s weight shifting again as he spread the map out. The focus appeared to be on the Kuril Islands, pushing in until he found a spot he liked. Newton flattened his palm on Hermann’s chest and laid back again.

“There.”

 _There_. There being precisely nothing to see. A landmass. Cold and rocky, by the looks of it, with little to no details.

“There?” Hermann asked, hoping for some clarity.

“Yeah, man, they found a facility I was keeping. And it’s there.” Newton turned his head up, but the angle was just so that Hermann couldn’t see him without tilting his head oddly, so he licked his lips and focused on the hologram. “There’s gotta be some answers at that lab. Something. I really need to know, Herms. I gotta…I gotta see it.”

“And what about San?” Hermann asked, _again_ , because he simply could not let that go.

“Oh my _god_ , dude. Who’s antagonizing now?”

“I know. But you were….”

“You’re going to say ‘alarming’ and I want you to know, okay, you’re wrong? I wasn’t alarming. I was…. God. I can hear your voice. Stop for one second, Herms.”

“Transfixed.”

“Yeah. I know. I _know_.” Newton pulled his hand back, fussing with the phone again. “Transfixed, god damnit. Can we just…look. We can’t do anything for a while. You have to rest. And shut up, because I can hear you rolling your eyes, dude, but we have to. You _have_ to. And I want to go to this facility and see what I left behind. If I have any clues, anything to piece shit together. It’s _my_ fucking brain, Herms. I’m the one who got the etch-a-sketch treatment and I want…I can’t have these….”

Hermann wrapped his arms around Newton, trying to console, trying to apologize in the same measure. He winced as he tucked his head down but kept any protesting sound out of his voice as he kissed the top of Newton’s head.

“I need you there,” Newton whispered, clinging to Hermann’s arms.

“I insist that I am,” Hermann answered in kind.

Newton worried his hand up and down Hermann’s arm, thinking to himself. And, of course, Hermann let him. He could taste a bit of the anxiety slipping through, his own heart rate beginning to pick up speed and with an annoying frequency on the machine beside them, but they paid no mind to it. It just was.

“Well, for now,” Newton finally said, slowly, letting himself trudge through the words that were getting stuck. “We can’t do anything. Because. You’re on bed rest.”

Hermann closed his eyes and nodded to himself. It wasn’t an answer. It was resolutely not an answer. It was a dodge because they both knew what Newton desired and what he should do, and he was avoiding responsibility for both. But he wasn’t wrong. Hermann was stuck, for lack of a better term, until he was recovered. And whether that would be a full recovery was up to them. Him, mostly. He didn’t see how he could stand being in this bed for more than a day, though, perhaps, patience was a virtue. He just had to figure out a way to wrestle some up for himself.

“We could go for the semi-public—”

“ _No_ , Newton!”

“I’m saying, I’ll do all the work. And you’re quiet anyways. Honestly, it’s more trouble for _me_ because—”

“I’m going to call a nurse!”

“Sure, get an audience. Didn’t know you liked—”

“Hands off the trousers or I will cut them off.”

“We have to get them a room before they fuck in front of the other patients,” somebody said outside the curtains and Hermann went beet red from head to toe so fast, his vision bled dark and he thought he was going to pass out.

Newton, the insufferable fool, giggled into his neck. Giggled! If he wasn’t turning into molten from embarrassment at that very moment, Herman might even think it was cute, but he was actively trying to set himself on fire through a chemical reaction under his skin and _failing_.

“I’m sorry,” Newton muttered against him.

“You had better be,” Hermann answered, all but trembling.

“Christ, you’re hot, Herms.” Newton kissed his neck, which didn’t help, but it was nice, in a way. In a small, almost helpful way. “Sorry. Not that way. You know what I meant.”

“God.”

“Antagonizing, dude. You said,” Newton agreed, and kissed his neck again, which earned him what was supposed to be a quick slap to his back and turned instead into steady hands brushing through his hair, clinging to him tightly. Nothing more and nothing less. And that was fine for the both of them.

\---

It would be so goddamn hot to take him apart right now. Literally hot. No, not literally. Figuratively. That sounds like a redundant argument from something from your past but your face is pressed up into his long, long, lovely neck and you let it slide just as quickly as it came to you. You kiss him, and you melt under his fingertips, and you think about how so fucking amazing it would be to reach under his waistband and listen to him strain in the quiet as you jacked him off and holy shit, calm down, old boy, calm down. You two are being nice and quiet and _resting_ right now.

Resting is good. Resting gives time. And you two need time while the Powers That Be decided just what exactly they’re going to do to your San down in the tank. The very same one you think is still a good idea to try and hook a PONs unit to and see how far and how well and how articulate you can discuss, just, everything with him. Everything. What experiences does he have? What knowledge can he bring to the table? How badly can you infect him or he infect you with those assholes across the rift in the anteverse? How much is that thought your own or an Easter egg left over from the Precursors?

You slow down, resting against Hermann’s chest and let him pet you into submission. Let him pretend he pet you into submission, at least, while you consider all the possibilities that you are still somehow being moved about by aliens and you’re going to be stuck that way for the rest of your short, miserable, damned and awful life. You can feel Hermann’s heartbeat against your chest. You can feel it through your too-many-shirts, beating against your sternum, beating against the reminder, the reminder, the reminder, the last bit, the reminder.

Hermann.

God _damnit_ you love him.

Thank god.

After a while, he’s relaxed again and he’s breathing deeply again and he’s almost snoring and you remember this sound, this rhythm, that you can make your own heart and lungs and body imitate. Not too long now and he’ll be dreaming and you think, not for the first time, not for the last time, how fucking wild it would be to get in there and dream with him. You want that. You want that so much more than the nightmares. You want that because your nightmares scream loud and push hard and beat out of your skull that Hermann sometimes picks them up. He remembers. He’s seen them. He told you back when you were visiting the Shatterdome with Liwen. The fucking nightmares. Cry for fucking help, wasn’t it?

You breathe. You force yourself to match him. You try and sleep and fail and that’s okay, because there’s always tomorrow, but you stay this time because this is so your fault, like. Don’t even pretend it isn’t, Newt, this is on you. And you’re going to fix it. Fix the whole damn thing or set the world on fire. You, my man, are a goddamn mess, living in finites you can’t possibly adhere to. Stop trying to destroy the world, dude. There’s at least one bastard left that you gotta fight for.

The reminder.

Together man, with you.

\---

And it looks, at least to anyone outside, that they were both entangled in each other’s limbs and sleeping soundly. Jake almost says cute and Nate pats his chest before he gets the word out. They had to check, _obviously_. Newton was running around with a guard and he hadn’t slipped away but they had to _check_. Kinda insane and definitely irresponsible if they didn’t. The fact that he was there, with Gottlieb? Well, maybe they didn’t have to shackle him to the bed tonight.

“Keep two posted at the doors and rotate out as needed. Somebody let me know when he’s awake,” Nate said to the cadets with him.

“Aye, sir,” they said and Jake snapped a clean salute to him.

“Aye aye, sir,” he said, and it shouldn’t sound so goddamn filthy when he was just repeating back three simple words. He winked and Nate punched his knuckles into Jake’s chest again. Jake feigned hurt, clutching his chest, staggering back even. “Ya trying to end me?”

“Shut _up_ ,” Nate drawled out and forked his head towards the door. Not an outright ask. Not verbal. But a quick synapse of _please_ and _she’s waiting for us_ and _soon as we close the door, I’m fucking_ on _you, you asshole_.

Jake raised an eyebrow; the smirk was too much. He was always too much. Why in the hell did he love this bastard anyways?

“We could try and reverse it this time, y’know? Go for a—”

“Jesus Christ, can we move? Please?” Nate asked and pushed Jake towards the doorway. “Guys, I’m serious. Radio me when they’re awake.”

“Don’t be too loud, though, cause, like, I’ll probably be asleep, and I—”

Nate pushed Jake harder until he stumbled and laughed on his way out the door. “Alright, alright. Shutting up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, I may have obsessively watched A Series of Unfortunate Events so, like, that literally and figuratively is absolutely from that. I'd apologize but also no. It just happens.


	16. They'll Deny It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Hermann recovers, Newt decides to try and put in a few formal requests. Super formal. He is the most formal at formal requests you could ever see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (He is not formal.)

“I didn’t say it was a _good_ idea. I said it was an _idea_. Mark the difference.”

“I’m saying it’s downright suicidal on your part.”

“My part. Exactly. So, don’t even fret.”

“Of _course_ I’m going t—”

“Of _course_ you will, dude. Just. Let me?”

Hermann wanted to riot. He very nearly did, of course, but had been quickly talked down by Newton. The two remarked that it was humorous, that it was bizarre, that the universe had gone and flipped and they should set their karmic watches back to 0 soon, or else chaos would surely reign.

“I still don’t understand—”

“Yes, you do.”

“Would you _please_ let me finish?” Hermann asked, spiking the formality into his request as a tool, as a weapon, as a barb. “I just don’t think—”

“Ah.” The nurse smiled as he pushed through the curtain, bringing in a tray of food and medication. “Good to see the doctors are at it again?”

“Hello, Zim,” Newton muttered absently, his hand traveling from the tablet he was reviewing over to Hermann’s thigh. Hermann was sure Newton wasn’t even aware of this little possessive streak he had picked up, and that the gesture itself was unwarranted. But he smiled all the same.

“Good morning, Zimran,” Hermann said, sitting up a little. “Or. Afternoon, I think. I’m still a little fuzzy on the details there.”

“No, you’re not,” Newton said.

“Pushing eleven if—” Zimran started, setting down the tray.

“11:03,” said Newton and Zimran, bless him, held in his sigh and consternation. Apparently, he had the patience of a saint. Hermann thought he could learn a thing or two from him.

“Well, then, see? You’re still alright, Doc,” the nurse said with a flashy smile. He tilted his head at Newton, who was clearly preoccupied with his research and made a simple questioning gesture. Hermann nodded, waved his hand, and marked the interaction as “commendable.”

“Look, I know how to file the paperwork for the request,” Newt said, shifting again in his chair so he was somehow inching closer to Hermann’s bed. “Just let me finish it up. It can’t hurt to ask.”

“It can when it decidedly gets you further into trouble,” Hermann countered, taking the small paper cup with his various medications and downing it in a single go. “Oo ‘ave a ‘ot a’ ‘ake,” he managed around the pills and swallowed them down with bitter orange juice.

“I hear you. I totally do, man. Loud and clear. Just, like.” Newton was rambling, swiping through the last check box before the screen brightened and he quickly locked the tablet, looking up at the two with an easy grin. “And done!”

“Done with what?” Zimran asked, tilting his head just so.

“Request. Formal request. Herms here isn’t the only one who abused the system submitting faulty complaints over to HR.”

“They weren’t faulty,” Hermann said, bristling visibly. “I meant every single one.”

“You were flirting. It’s alright.” Newton rubbed Hermann’s leg. “I got you back with the petri dish.”

“That was practically chemical warfare!” Zimran chuckled to himself while laying out the rest of his tray and Hermann pointed an accusatory knuckle. “Don’t laugh! You should be on my side. You never had to work with the man!”

“He’s charming,” Zimran said, and went over to check the monitors and fluid in the IV.

Newton perked up, gripping Hermann’s leg a little before giving it an affirming pat. “Well well, seems my charms have gotten to him, Herms. You should be worried. I’m super—”

“Don’t,” Hermann grumbled.

“Yeah, I mean, I’m—”

“Newton!”

Distractions. All of it. Hermann had already been in bed for three days, recovering from the small fracture and unfortunate concussion. He was on a myriad of pain medications both for head and leg, with a few debates to ensure the cocktail didn’t simply knock him out. It did anyways. He would have been lucky to simply be diagnosed with a clean and closed basal fracture and take some acetaminophen, but a lifetime of pain relief medications had tempered both his pain threshold and his tolerance. Nobody said that the sleep was probably more necessary just to keep him in bed. Newton knew he could be a bit miserable and he would get up to walk around, read, write, _something_. He spent most of his time sleeping and when he was awake, bitter at the lost time.

But, he was grateful for one thing.

During every moment he was conscious, Newton was there. He was usually reading on his borrowed tablet or snoozing in his chair or writing in a battered journal he must have scrounged up from somewhere—the journal was primarily little drawings of potential tattoos to be added to his collection, and then crossed out in big bold x’s as he decided against it. Again. And again. And again. Whatever was motivating him to his slightly-less-known creative endeavor still didn’t know how to draw anything outside of a stylized kaiju. And that was fine and well, as long as he was in the chair. He was there. And that was a blessing he could hold onto.

“I got this one, Zim,” Newton said, taking the food and holding it on a flat palm. “Thanks again.”

Zimran nodded and flicked a checkmark on a chart at the end of Hermann’s bed before he left them to their modest privacy. Hermann waved with his bruised hand, annoyed at the little IV. His head was already getting that slightly milky, floaty, familiarly soft feeling he despised. He leaned back with a sigh, pushing Newton’s hand with the plate down towards the table.

“I hate this,” he muttered, his words starting to stick together.

“I know you do.” Newton forked a piece of food into his mouth, raising his eyebrows. “You sure you don’t want any? It’s kinda good?”

Hermann shook his head, blinking slower.

“Why?” He licked his lip and forced his eyes open to look at Newton. “Why’re you putting in that request?”

“Because they’ll deny it,” Newton said simply, scooting up onto the bed to hold Hermann. The bandage was gone. Hermann could feel the ugly bruise on his forehead, and imagined it looked far worse. Dark and red on his eye but not as bad as it was. Newton stroked Hermann’s hair carefully, his other hand rubbing Hermann’s chest. “Then I’ll put in another request. They’ll deny it. I’m really hoping third times the charm, but, I doubt I get to go, period. Maybe with a contingency. I mean, if Jake and Nate like to play babysitters, maybe they could—”

Hermann hummed some response and dipped his head in against Newton’s chest, moving slow. He plucked at Newton’s shirt, wiggling a finger in between the buttons. Newton had taken to just the one long-sleeved button down and Hermann could feel skin directly beneath. Fewer layers. Probably because they didn’t have enough clothes between them until they got back home, but he couldn’t help but think it was a step in the right direction.

“Alright, Hermann the worm,” Newton said, giggling. He pulled Hermann’s finger out from his shirt. “Hey, rest. We’ll eat dinner later, okay?”

A little head nod. A tiny, sleepy kiss to Newton’s neck. “Everything hurts, Newt,” he whispered with a smile, a bit unequal in manner and subject, but, he was perhaps more forthcoming before he fell asleep.

“I know. You’ll be okay, man.”

“You too,” he said, and tapped the hidden message on Newton’s chest.

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Event…ually.”

“Yeah.”

\---

_PAN PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS_

Employee Requisition Form 1121-3B

Department: K-SCIENCES

Current Shatterdome Location: SYDNEY

 **Your Name:** Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Newton Geiszler (MD, PhD, ScD, DXB, LMNOP, QRS)

 **PPDC ID:** K2-10011920

 **Date of Request:** 08/15/2035

 **DETAILS OF REQUISITION UNDER PPDC PRSA:** Travel and access to the SECRET facility found in Russia on the Kuril Island that were once owned and operated by one Newt Geiszler (plus friend. I think). Request travel with Dr. Hermann Gottlieb after medical release form filed. Hell, bring a team with us, I don’t care, I just want to see what’s in that lab. Hell requested formally. Of course.

Forward to Ranger Officer Jake Pentecost.

Forward to Ranger Officer Nate Lambert.

Forward to Ranger Officer, J-Science Lead, badass Jules Reyes (request made on Jules tablet, no take-backsies).

**PPDC PRSA**

**Lead (fill out by PRSA office upon receipt):**

**\---**

_PAN PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS_

Employee Requisition Form 1121-3B

Department: K-SCIENCES

Current Shatterdome Location: SYDNEY

 **Your Name:** Dr. Hermann Gottlieb

 **PPDC ID:** K1-120197

 **Date of Request:** 15-08-2035

 **DETAILS OF REQUISITION UNDER PPDC PRSA:** Formal request for formal expense paid travel and formal direct access to Dr. Newt Geiszler’s lab located at specified coordinations detained by one handsome Ranger Officer Nate Lambert of the PPDC. Formally. Request travel with Dr. Newton Geiszler, current PPDC property prisoner person.

Formally.

Definitely from Hermann. Not from Newt. This is all in a super high-brow English accent that isn't forced and wasn't cultivated over the years because I'm goddamn German or something and think I have to do this to be taken seriously and now can't even stop. Forward to Jules, Nate, and Jake. Thanks.

**PPDC PRSA**

**Lead (fill out by PRSA office upon receipt):**

\---

_PAN PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS_

Employee Requisition Form 1121-3B

Department: K-SCIENCES

Current Shatterdome Location: SYDNEY

 **Your Name:** Tendo Choi

 **PPDC ID:** LDS-1-424418

 **Date of Request:** 15-08-2035 or 08-15-2015

 **DETAILS OF REQUISITION UNDER PPDC PRSA:** Please send Newt and Hermann out to Russia because I think it would be really cool if they got to uncover some more Precursor bullshit that I definitely know about because I have my eye and ear on everything, brother, I am the ultimate spy. In fact, arrest me. Don’t arrest me. I’m innocent and enjoying my freedoms somewhere else and probably banging so many hot people at a really sweet club somewhere warm and fleecing tourists at a classy casino because I can count cards better than Hermann. I’m the best. Tendo, seriously, if you hear about this request? Should have never given me your ID code. I hope you’re well. I know it’s ridiculous to write this out, but I’m basically flooding the PRSA with requests because Hermann is hurt and I need to do something too while he’s out. I have to stay here, with him, for when he wakes up because his face lights up, man. I know you know. I know you knew, like, way before we did. I’m glad you didn’t push it. I’m pissed you hit on him in front of me that one time, but I understand what you were doing. I gotta get to Russia, man. I gotta see what they left there for me. And I need Hermann there too. Man, I should get in touch with you. I hope you’re doing well. Seriously. Formally. Whatever one you decide. This is so stupid, you’re not even going to see this! PRSA personnel reading this? I assume Deb for some reason? I just assume you’re a Deb. If you are a Deb, pass on my actual request. Correctly, or whatever. I’m basically begging you, Deb. There’s a lot of shit going on and if I can go there and figure out some stuff, maybe I can put to rest this itching in my head that, well, okay, I’m not a complete moron. I’m not putting that down on an actual, formal, real request into PPDC databases to be used against me later. Look, I know I’m essentially locked up for life with you guys, so, like, cut me a little deal. I don’t destroy the world, you guys let me go check out that lab? I’m not going to destroy the world either way, that’s a bad bargaining chip. Thanks for letting Hermann use your medical facilities, by the way. Like, super nice of you to help him and let him rest here and recover from all this bullshit. San. You know what, I’m not even going to go check because if I get close to that door, I bet you anything I’m getting handcuffed and dragged off and locked up and then what’s Hermann going to do when he wakes up? Some Wrath of God shit, I bet. He’s the best. Be good to him. I’m trying to be. 

Formal request for formal travel yadda yadda yadda. Please forward correct requests over to Jake, Nate, Jules. You know the drill, Deb. I also remember Mako and Raleigh’s IDs, but it feels really insensitive using their IDs to get into the system again. I bet I could ask some of the cadets? We’ll see. Expect new requests in 24 when the system lets me back in, Deb. Thanks.

**PPDC PRSA**

**Lead (fill out by PRSA office upon receipt):**

\---

_PAN PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS_

Employee Requisition Form 1121-3B-RESPONSE

Department: PPDC PRSA

Current Shatterdome Location: CALIFORNIA

Dr. Newton Geiszler: Request **DENIED**.

Note: System request lock **UPDATED**. See supervisor for request change.

**PPDC PRSA**

**LEAD (fill out by PRSA office upon receipt):** L. Heijde.

\---

_PAN PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS_

Employee Requisition Form 1121-3B-RESPONSE

Department: PPDC PRSA

Current Shatterdome Location: CALIFORNIA

Dr. Hermann Gottlieb: Request **DENIED**.

NOTE: System generated ID change request: **ACCEPTED**

**PPDC PRSA**

**LEAD (fill out by PRSA office upon receipt):** F. Sampson.

 

_PAN PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS_

Employee Requisition Form 1121-3B-RESPONSE

Department: PPDC PRSA

Current Shatterdome Location: SYDENY

Tendo Choi: Request **DENIED**.

NOTE: Forward request to Ranger Officer Major Nathan Lambert, pilot of Gipsy Avenger, Ranger Officer Jacob Pentecost, pilot of Gipsy Avenger, Ranger Officer J-Science Lead Jules Reyes: **ACCEPTED**

Good luck, Dr. Geiszler. - Deborah

**PPDC PRSA**

**LEAD (fill out by PRSA office upon receipt):** D. Argoson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Simply because I think I'm randomly clever, their IDs are little ciphers. Also, I miss Tendo. He should come back for realsies. Also, super aware of the irony that Hermann is upset because he's asleep so much and missing time and Newton is missing goddamn YEARS of his time. So. Don't think that argument is not going to happen.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	17. Hermann Pets Your Hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermann would like to go home and be done, but they've got one more thing to do before that and it's time to get new clothes! No, wait, not that. Newton has somewhere he'd like to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha HA! No, I'm not letting this die, but I did have to disappear for a wedding, so. I have returned and we're chugging along with this story.

The order came in when Hermann was standing outside the men’s facilities, waiting for Newton. They had finished packing, as far as being packed could be, since they had hardly brought anything with them except for a change of clothes and their medications. Like they hadn’t planned to be gone for nearly two weeks. Like they had never travelled before and were complete bumbling idiots with borrowed uniforms and rags left between them—Hermann was not bitter about this whole adventure, per say, but he was definitely not happy. He was only happy that they were going home. That this was being left behind. That the trouble with San was handed over to people above their pay grade and they could just shut the book on this mess. Forever.

Not forever.

A young tech spotted Hermann leaning against the wall and plucking at a bit of lint on the edge of his sweater. She sprinted up to catch him, like he had any capacity or will to suddenly start running in the opposite direction, never mind the fact that he had a cane he was actively using or that he had been freshly released from their hospital.

“Dr. Gottlieb?” she asked, slightly winded.

“Yes,” he answered slowly, the end of his statement ticking upwards until it was almost a question. She beamed at him, holding out a manila folder.

“Great! So, I presume Dr. Geiszler is nearby?”

Hermann looked at the door just as a loud roar from one of their hand dryers set off. He nodded and pointed at it to indicate that Newton was present, if occupied.

“Even better.” She grinned. Hermann still hadn’t taken the file and she was holding it out for him, waiting. “Well, Dr. Gottlieb. We managed to—”

“—and all, but I still fucking hate…oh!” Newton stepped out into the hall, wringing his hands together. He balked at the tech, shifting his weight to angle more towards Hermann than her. “Uh. Hi there. Herms?”

“I haven’t gotten a name yet,” Hermann answered, standing up to his full height. Not intentionally imposing, just presenting more of himself. Now that he was out of the bed, he could officially flip the roles again and he wouldn’t be at the mercy of Newton’s doting care. Not that he didn’t enjoy it fully, but he missed their…slightly more equal…slightly more Hermann-has-control-of-himself dynamic. “She seems very excited to give us something.”

“Is this from Lamcost?” Newton asked, snatching the folder from the woman and flipping it open in his excitement.

“I’m sorry…who?”

“Nate or Jake. Or Jules, honestly, but I haven’t figured out how to mash that in. I was avoiding saying their names for the sake of time, as in saving said time, as in being efficient or something,” Newton said, pouring over the letter typed up inside, his face small and concentrated before he lit up and snapped the folder shut. “But then I had to explain anyways—holy _shit_! Herms!”

“What?” Hermann asked, his voice a low rumble of disapproval at the nickname in front of the tech. An old, knee-jerk reaction.

“Where’s Lamcost?” Newton said, pointing with the folder at the young tech. She blinked, her mouth working open and closed as she processed his reaction. “Never mind. Herms, c’mon, I bet I know where to find them.”

“Find them for what?”

Hermann’s demand was met with a hasty grab and drag down the hall towards the communications tower favored by Reyes on the base. The tech stayed near the bathroom door, pointing at them and then the floor and then herself. She almost started after them and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. She gave a little half-hearted wave before she snapped her hands back behind her, tilted her head down, and marched off in the opposite direction. Plenty of help she had been.

“Newton, don’t _drag_ me,” Hermann muttered, wrenching his arm loose. “I don’t like it when I’m feeling well; I don’t like it now.”

“You _are_ feeling well,” Newton said, finding Hermann’s arm again, but slowing his considerably quick pace. “Wanna know why? Cause you’re putting up a fight, man. This is great. Dude, I can’t even wait to see it.”

“See what?” Hermann glanced down at the folder clamped in Newton’s other hand and the terribly pleased look on his face. “Oh. Newton, no, I don’t think we should—”

“We gotta!”

“We don’t have supplies.”

“You make it sound like it’s this whole expedition.”

“Well, we’re wearing jumpsuits for trousers, for God’s sake. You think we can just fly over there—”

“Yes.”

“—and break in—”

“That’s _exactly_ what I’m saying, Herms.”

“—like a pair of…. Newton!”

Hermann yanked his arm back a second time, putting the brakes on their walk to go find their three “favorite” officers of the PPDC. He looked down, squinting just a little, the bruising on his head a better sight than before but still left with a blemishing ring around his eye. He fixed his jaw, tightened his hold on his cane, and stood there. And it was enough to make Newton pause.

“Herms. C’mon,” he said, a tinge of petulant whining breaking his voice. “Hermann. This is, like…our _best_ chance at answers.” When Hermann didn’t respond or shift his appearance, Newton licked his teeth and fidgeted. “I’m just! I’m just saying! Look, there’s gotta be data there on all of this. There’s…I put stuff there. I had to. I know I did. There’s no…there’s no fucking way I didn’t…. I just…Hermann! God _damn_ it, dude, say something or just…fuck you! Hermann. Okay? Okay, because—”

“Newton, please,” Hermann finally said, breaking from his slightly lost stare. He had been thinking away and was worried Newton had worked himself up into a proper frenzy. He only meant to process the information, the implication of where they would have to go, and he carefully took Newton’s shoulder, gripping it firmly to ground him. “I know this is important to you. I don’t like rushing into this. Is there _no_ sense in returning home and recovering first?”

Newton screwed his eyes shut, shaking his head back and forth in a limited pivot, a few centimeters back and forth. He chewed his lips, stretched his chin up, and breathed far too fast for his own good. Hermann hooked the handle of his cane onto his elbow, freeing up his other hand to cup Newton’s face.

“Listen to me.” Newton swallowed, not opening his eyes, but at least forcing himself to be still. Hermann realized he was likely just trying to stop himself from crying. “We can go. We can go and see what you’ve left there. I don’t mind that at all and I’m sorry that I made it sound like it was completely off the table. I just want to understand why it’s imperative we go _now_. As in _this instant._ When we both know it has been left alone long enough for your… _San_ to escape.”

“We don’t know it’s been left alone!” Newton blurted out, finally snapping his eyes open wide and looking panicked up at Hermann. “We assume it was. And we know the PPDC found it because they contacted us. Or you. Or, no, us. Either way! But we _don’t_ know it’s been left alone.”

Hermann was silent again, parsing out his thoughts. He clenched his jaw, looking through Newton at the solutions ahead.

“Who gave the approval?” he finally asked.

Newton didn’t relax. Not entirely. And he didn’t smile. Not intentionally. But he lifted the folder between them and waved it back and forth, an invitation to peek. Hermann sighed and took the folder, flipping it open to the printed forms inside and Newton seemed to suddenly blossom with a thought.

“Ramcost!”

“W…wait, Newton, I’m reading…what did you say?”

Newton just took Hermann’s hand and was leading him again.

\---

“I demand to either be knocked out or somebody get me some goddamn Xanax when we fly this time!” Newton pulled the folder easily out of Hermann’s hands and slapped it down on the nearest terminal while his arm hooked around Hermann’s waist. “And another thing!”

There were a few more tech personnel in the station this time, all of them consulting their work or relaying information. Many of them had heavy-duty headphones on, barely turning their attention to the two filthy-looking idiots at the entrance. Hermann was immensely embarrassed at the outburst, suffering in silence. 

However, Newton’s gambit paid off. There were two of their favorite three stationed up in the tower. Reyes leaned casually, one foot tucked behind the other, and a hand placed firmly on her hip as she waited for a better explanation as to why Newton had just burst in and yelled about being incapacitated for a flight. Lambert was sitting next to her, hunched over his terminal, glancing over his shoulder. He scowled. His eyebrows inched up, before he schooled his features and tugged off the headset he had half-cocked on his ears.

“Yes?” Nate asked at last, rising to meet them.

Newton grabbed up the folder and walked the rest of the distance from the entrance to their console. He held the folder flat out for them like a message.

“We need clothes,” he answered. Newton motioned for Hermann to come up and join him, practically jogging back and taking Hermann’s hand, walking slower so that Hermann didn’t feel it necessary to pull his hand free. “Supplies. I’m not saying it’s going to be ‘two-days-on-a-boat’ or anything, but we really need to get stuff.”

“You know, you’re lucky we’re even agreeing to this,” Nate said and mirrored Reyes by putting his hands on his hips. “If you think you can burst in here and start with _demands_ now, I—”

“You’re going to get everything we find in there,” Newton said, sweeping Nate’s argument away. “Research, development, I don’t give a shit. I’m not looking to clone a little baby brother for San.” He sounded sure of himself, but Jules and Nate only looked half-convinced. “Look, that was part of the deal, wasn’t it?”

“Deal?” Nate tucked his jaw in, perplexed, and finally reached for Newton’s folder. Jules stole it before he could grab it, holding it out of Nate’s reach. He looked mildly annoyed at her quick hand. “Wait, did you put a deal into this?”

“What?” Jules asked innocently, her attention on her hands. “I just thought it would be incentive for good behavior.”

“Good behav…Jules. You can’t….”

Nate shook his head and finally looked down at the pages with Jules. He squinted at the print, less to focus on the words and more because he was so obviously annoyed. Not even mildly anymore. Scowl lines were deeply entrenched on his face. The man could do with a bit of humor in his life. And this coming from Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, who had suffered long enough with Newton back in their lab to know exactly why crows feet dug into the skin.

She waited patiently for Nate to finish reading, less patiently when she tapped a line that she was invested in, and nudged her hip against his. He grunted his answer, staggering a little as a show of her force and his willingness to adapt to her, and finally, _finally_ nodded.

“Jake’s taking them,” he said, crossing his arms.

“What?” Hermann and Newton asked at the same time, stepping closer. Hermann expounded on it with, “Why on Earth would you want—”

“He’ll hate it,” Nate said to Jules, and perhaps those were less scowl lines and more laugh lines, streaking away from his eyes instead of his lips. She nudged him again, a little lighter this time. “What? He pissed me off too. I’m allowed to get back at him if you’re going to go to another base to get your point across. Which means you left _me_ and the cadets, by the way.”

“Stop being such a baby.”

Newton waved his hand in their general direction, even snapping his fingers.

“Yeah, listen, great. Can we stop flirting for two seconds and, like, get this puppy started before somebody decides they’d like it better if we _didn’t_ let the fugitive leave base to go poke around a secret lab?”

“Don’t put it like that, Newton,” Hermann grumbled, looking towards the ceiling for some kind of guidance or saving grace or anything, really.

“I’m just saying.”

“It would do well if you _didn’t_ , is my point.”

“No, I’ll allow this,” Nate said, setting the folder down on his terminal again. Jules elbowed him a little harder than playful and he grabbed his rib. “Sorry. Yes. Officer Reyes is allowing this. Easy up, Jules, Jesus.”

“Gentlemen,” she said, smiling at Hermann and Newton, holding her arms up to lead them out of the communications tower. “Let’s go get you two ready and break the news to Jake. Shall we?”

\---

Predictably, Jake was less than enthused to be sent off like this. In so far as he closed the cabin door in Jules’ face, demanded Nate come and tell him personally why he was being sent out with the “Two Geezers for the Price of One” without Nate _or_ Jules tagging along to keep him company, and that somebody best bring him ice cream to soothe his bruised ego.

“I don’t get why he’s being a baby about this,” Newton grumbled, seated next to Hermann back out to the tarmac of the base.

They’d been granted a fresh set of civilian clothes, nothing that would ever have found its way into Hermann’s wardrobe had they not been in dire need. Newton looked quite comfortable in his jeans and his long-sleeved tee with a little tourist shirt over top of that it in neon blue—it sported a chubby looking cartoon koala on the front with a pair of ridiculous pink shades. Newton laughed so hard at the sight of it. When he spotted Hermann in khaki slacks hemmed nearly three inches too short and a similar neon green shirt with a stick-thin crane on it wearing a wide-brimmed hat, he broke down into tears. Happy, hysterical, unnecessary tears.

“Yes, well. How would it feel if you had to travel alone?” Hermann asked, crossing his arms and hunching over to hide as much of his outfit as he could manage.

“Oh, awful,” Newton answered immediately. “But he’s not travelling alone. He has us.”

“Fine, but what if you had to travel without me?” Hermann ventured.

“Even worse.” Newton screwed up his face in disgust. “Don’t even suggest it.”

“I’m not.”

The two were waiting near the entrance to the base, seated on a bench with their bags tucked in by their ankles. They looked very much like a pair of middle-aged nobodies, lost and completely out of place with their army surroundings. It should be comical. It should be bizarre. It should very well ease some of the tension that was gripping Hermann’s shoulder, bending him down to an uncomfortable angle as he leaned against Newton and thought _are we making a mistake_?

“We gonna sit around all day, or are we gonna go to Russia?”

Hermann and Newton turned in unison to see Jake coming out of the entrance with a duffel on his back. They stood in unison and it was Newton who reached between them and held Hermann’s hand, squeezing it carefully before he curled their pinkies together.

And as they went over to the jet that would be taking them, that Jake would be piloting—which, did that seem smart? Hermann didn’t know his qualifications, but he did know that the Jaeger pilots back when he was part of the initial program came from the air force and that it seemed quite reasonable that Jake should know how to pilot—Hermann still had that nagging thought in the back of his head. He smiled down at Newton, who was strapped in next to him and clapping a small blue pill into his mouth. He swallowed the Xanax provided to him and tucked his chin in against Hermann’s chest. Hermann wondered. He wondered. _Are we making a mistake_?

\---

Finally! Finally doing something! Finally getting answers! Yeah, you feel nervous as hell, and half that is just because, hey, we have to fly again and you fucking _hate **flying**_! But it’s okay. It’s okay because Hermann is still here. Still with you. Because you’re going to the place where your secrets are waiting for you like friends and you’re going to scoop them all up and eat them. You’re going to devour them. You’re going to patch the holes in your head and you’re going to feel alright, alright? Alright!

The plan takes off and you clutch white-knuckled to Hermann’s arm, letting the soft blanket of the benzodiazepine cover you gently, gently, gently. Gently into the night. Gently into the calm. Gently into the little box where you keep all your fears and your worries and your heart-racing terror and locking it up. For now. For later. For never, if you can help it. You don’t grip Hermann’s hand as tightly. You smile and stretch up and kiss the thin skin of his neck and wonder how hard it would be to punch through to his arteries. You hate that you know the answer, that you know the entire map of his skeleton and his muscles and his circulatory system. You hate that you think this, but you think it anyways and you smile when he smiles, because he smiles, because when he smiles he does it so honestly, like the man couldn’t fake it if he tried, and because then you know he really loves you.

And, fine, he’s asking you questions, and some surface level answers come out of your mouth, but you want to just sink into this and let nothing buzz over your skull for a bit. You want to allow yourself to lose control. Not lose control. Lose the tight squeeze you’ve kept on yourself to be good. Be good. Be you. Be you. Be yourself. Be real. Be now. Be present. Be helpful. Be loving. Be better. Be good. Be everything those fucks on the other side were definitely not. And you’re not. You’re not, right? You’re good?

Hermann pets your hair and you realize you’ve made a face that he doesn’t like. You’ve let a little of your worries slip out and he comes in and he smooths your hair and he pets your face and he says these soft, wonderful, inspiring things to you. He mutters German love letters into your temples, like he thinks you don’t understand what he’s saying and you do. But you pretend it’s all nothing because Hermann is goddamn poetic in any language, but more so in his mother tongue. Beautiful. God, you melt at the sounds and you melt at the drug and you melt at the heat and the relief that you’re finally going where you need to go to get what you need to get and the world will slide into place where it needs to be. Nothing off kilter. Nothing shoved off balance. Nothing left dangling, unanswered, unknown, begging you to solve the riddle that is your own fucking life.

Hermann pets your hair. You realize you’ve moved on from making a face; you’re weeping softly against him. You close your eyes and pretend they aren’t actually tears. You wish they weren’t. You wish you weren’t this cracked object held together by strung out nerves and clear tape.

Hermann pets your hair. You’ve stopped crying and you’ve dozed off a little and you wake up when someone ahead announces they’re close. They’re close? God, how long as it been? You sit up and scrub your gummy eyes, the crust of sleep and tears making them puffy and hard to see out of. For a second you think about your glasses and then you think about why you don’t need your glasses and you want to cry all over again, but you don’t. You just smile. You put it up so easy when you look at Hermann and kiss his cheek this time, at the corner of his mouth, and ask how the flight was. He’s so relieved to see you awake, he turns and kisses you properly.

Hermann pets your hair.

If he could just do that forever, that would be great. But he can’t. Because the plane is shaking and you knows you should feel upset by that but you aren’t. Up ahead, Jake takes them in to land, circling the small island in Russia, looking for a patch on the ice smooth enough to accept them. It’s rough. It’s rough and it sucks and even Hermann grips your hand and makes a small yelp and you look up at him and you reach, shaky, terrified.

You pet Hermann’s hair.

\---

“We alive?” Jake’s voice sounded as steady as ever and Hermann didn’t understand entirely why that upset him. He breathed heavily through his nose, his face turned down to give Newton better access to stroke his calloused fingers through the slightly curled fringe of hair atop his head. He was immediately aware that he needed a haircut, even if the thought nor the issue were rather pressing. “Good. Cause we’re here. So.”

There was a few clacking noises before Jake appeared from the captain’s cabin and stood in front of them.

“Rough landing,” he said with an uneasy grin.

“That is a word for it, yes,” Hermann answered and gently pushed Newton’s hands off him so they could get up. “Are we close to this supposed lab?”

Jake just shrugged and Newton made a soft, slightly disgruntled noise as he plucked at his seat belt. Hermann reached over to help, only to have his hand slapped away.

“I’ve got it,” Newton said stubbornly.

It appeared that the Newton from before, who was terribly soft and cuddly and a touch weepy, had slipped away and Hermann had missed the chance to keep him. He made a face and got up after him, pulling up the PPDC issued winter coat.

“Newton, I—”

“I’m going to _prove_ to you it’s there,” Newton said over his shoulder and went to the small side hatch, twisting it open and letting in the elements.

“Oh. I didn’t mean—”

Newton sniffled, grabbed Hermann’s hand, and squeezed it. As though to say _I know_. As though to say _I’m sorry. I’m tired. I’m scared. I’m sorry._ And Hermann squeezed his hand back, following him out of the small plane, Jake taking up the rear.


	18. Not of This World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If there's one thing to say, in the words of Newt: I'm sorry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! Self-harm and disjointed thinking and out of order sequences.

The door squealed angrily on it’s frozen tracks, Jake digging his boot into the snowy ice out front. He grunted and  shouldered it open just enough that he could slip in, which meant a bit more room for the two standing nearby. Newton held the crowbar, Hermann held him, and they nodded their heads when the door stuck.

“You lot was damn lucky I was here,” Jake said, puffs of white air blooming up into the air. He sighed heavily, reaching to take the crowbar back.

“Right,” Hermann said, snuggling up the edge of his PPDC winter coat to cover his nose. “The mechanism was frozen solid. You didn’t have to ‘hack’ anything, as you say.”

“Cause you two were gonna hack it with the crowbar?” Jake asked, half his face pinching upwards in the approximation of a smile. A squint. A taunt. “I’m just saying. You were lucky.”

“Fine, we’re lucky,” Newton said, shifting from one foot to the other. “Can we get inside already?”

Jake bowed nearly in half, holding an arm out. “After you, monsieur.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Newton rolled his eyes, pushing past and shoving against the stiff metal entrance. Still didn’t budge. He huffed and wiggled on through, slipping into the dark of the lab.

“Should we have let him go first?” Jake asked, dusting off his hands down the front of his jacket.

“Oh, I’m almost certain not.”

There was almost a struggle, one rushing in and the other making their move, before Hermann slipped in through the narrow opening and trudged on after Newton. He could hear Jake fighting with the door a bit but assumed he would be along soon anyways. And that was all fine and well, but he was blocking the limited sunlight afforded them from the entryway, so Hermann needed to adjust that—it should have worried him that there was no light ahead either, but perhaps Newton was running on muscle memory and they’d come across him soon enough. Hermann had already reached into the familiar pockets of his borrowed coat, found himself a pen light, and clicked it on as he adjusted to the dark and quiet interior of the half-submerged lab.

“Newton,” Hermann hissed at the dark, the name digging in his throat. “You can’t have gone off far.”

“I didn’t,” Newton answered simply, close enough that Hermann jumped and nearly dropped his light. Hermann could almost feel the smile spreading on his face, a little laugh lighting up his previously subdued if dour expression. Hermann spun, shooting out quick obscenities as something clicked and warmed. “I found the lights.”

They flashed on, one at a time, flat bars of light waking up after their slumber. “So. We still got energy going to this place. That’s…kinda….”

Hermann tucked in beside him as they looked down the slightly ominous tunnel that dropped at a short set of stairs. Very industrial, all painted in a rusty color in an attempt to “warm” the place up. Huge pipes covered their heads, narrowing in on them, crisscrossing over the paneled lights. Little bubbles of yellow striped the walls, safety codes painted in the cement. More lights came on, these offering a slightly blue hint to the open space that waited for them below.

“Here we go,” Newton whispered. And Hermann found his hand again, squeezing tight.

\---

The door was definitely going to need greasing. There was no way it _wasn’t_ going to stick when the real cold snap hit later in October. Dr. Geiszler sniffled, adjusted his tie, and stood on the gangplank leading into his facility, an arm out in a welcoming gesture.

“Anyways, it’s nothing too fancy,” he said with a forced grin. “We’re still tinkering with a few things, but progress takes time.”

“Oh, I think it’s great, Dr. Geiszler,” the short woman answered, knocking her snowy boot against the wall.

She wouldn’t complain. It was a prestigious grant and an honor to get to work with one of the brilliant minds that had subverted the neurological dampeners, cracked the code to the breach, and saved the world. Miss Kaelyn Turner was almost shaking with anticipation to get to do her field study out here with _the_ Dr. Geiszler.

“You’re kind for saying that,” Dr. Geiszler said, laughing. It was quick and dry and a little fried, but so was everything else he said. “Anyways, c’mon. The real deal is down here. Hermann, buddy?”

“Are we meeting another grad student in the program?” Miss Turner asked.

Dr. Geiszler removed a burgundy scarf from around his neck, leaving it on one of the ventilation pipes as he jumped down the stairs, two at a time. He looked back at Miss Turner, who was shedding her coat, a parka in the wrong shade of green. Newton squinted at the coat during their first meeting and kept remarking that he could get her a new one. Better suited for the elements.

“No, right, sorry. No, you’ll meet him soon enough. Colleague of mine, actually. I…he’s not _here_ , of course.” Dr. Geiszler laughed again and took Miss Turner’s coat, chucking it over a desk chair. He clapped his hands and started up a large terminal, flipping up hologram projections against an empty tank full of saline water, looking out at the cold ocean waters. “But, no worries. We’ll get him on the line later. I mean, I talk to the guy _all the time_ when I’m out here. You know he was the one who assisted me in closing the breach? You’ll love him. Hey, do me a favor, flip that one up right there. Perfect. Okay. So. Miss Turner. Let’s see your work on adaptations for the neural load on compromised brain tissue. You were working with coma patients before, right?”

Miss Turner beamed, quickly grabbing her laptop to share her findings, delighted to see that Dr. Geiszler had gone over her proposals and uploaded schematics onto the projections. Of course he had. There was no way he was going to let her into his program without going over the data.

“Right. Well, okay, we can start with the initial interface here—”

\---

There was a fine layer of dust coating the equipment down in the initial research bay. Hermann could not help but pass his finger over the reinforced glass tank that took up the greater portion of the north wall. The quiet was astounding. Everything seemed well reinforced, despite having no neighbors for miles. And miles. And endless miles of ocean to boot, stretched out in front of them like slate. Half the tank slipped in under the water, and Hermann expected to see something swimming on the other side. It was quite unnerving to look at too long, but he did, because he wanted to understand _everything_. He had to assume that this is where poor San was birthed and raised, namely because there was a crack at the bottom, over to towards the right, and ocean water had rushed in up to about half way. There was small splattering of now dark-blue-nearly-black sludge up on the glass, partially washed away by the salt water. His escape route. Poor fellow had put up a decent fight to get out, it seemed.

“Well, I’ve clocked three security cameras so far,” Jake said, shining a torch up at the low ceiling. “Ah. Four. So, assuming you didn’t put ‘em up for show, there’s gotta be some footage we could look over.”

Hermann glanced over at Newton, who was sitting at one of the three desks available in the rather large circular space. He was lightly touching the desktop, not yet poking at the stacks of paper there or rummaging through the drawers. Hermann tried to read him, he did. He tried to slip into his conscious and ask if he could help, but there was a numbness there that stung worse than electricity.

“Newton?”

Newton blinked and swiveled around, pushing up on his toes.

“Yeah. Yeah, totally. I probably saved everything there on the terminal.” He pointed and was about to get up when Hermann smiled and waved at him, flipping switches with practiced care. If there was one thing he could do in all this, it was get into a computer and, for lack of a better term, “hack” into Newton’s server. That was easy.

Jake leaned on the metal surface next to Hermann, looking between them and then shining the torch around the room again, illuminating two surgical tables a few medical equipment stations that Jake couldn’t name. Hermann barely looked over his shoulder as he started typing at the console, only enough to catch Newton opening a drawer and pulling out a thick blue journal, leather bound, with rubber bands holding too many loose pages all together.

“What did you find there, _liebling_?” Hermann asked, slightly distracted with the console.

“You know I know what ‘ _liebling_ ’ means, right?” Jake asked, but Hermann decidedly ignored him.

Newton didn’t answer as he pushed off the rubber bands, flipping the pages open to where the spine was already cracked. It fell easily, seamlessly, revealing for him whatever treasure was inside. The first page was a scribbled diagram of the PONs unit, much like the sleeker model he had set up in his apartment with Alice. He leaned hard on his elbow, a hand smashed up to his face as he looked over his notes.

“Ah, hello,” Hermann said softly, opening a folder with hundreds of .mp4s, backdated over the years Newton had spent in the lab.

“Found something?” Jake asked, turning his attention back to Hermann and the screen in front of them.

“I do believe I did,” Hermann answered.

He clicked on the third entry, for clearly arbitrary reasons. It was dated about two years after Newton had left the PPDC and communication with Hermann had slipped into a performative, professional setting. Not completely distant but degrading to the eventual nothing that would follow.

The image should not have surprised him. It was Newton’s lab. It was his records. Still, the sight of him, nearly ten years younger, spiked something in him that wanted to cry.

Newton was in the lab with a young woman, perhaps in her late twenties. There was a somewhat military air to her that Hermann and Jake recognized. She had a straight spine, a sharp bob cut close to her earlobes, dark hair and eyes and a quick smile. She had long gray sleeves rolled up to her elbows with a university logo stamped in red over the center of her shirt and she followed Newton eagerly about the lab.

“Jesus. D’you think this is the person helping you make San?” Jake asked, but was quickly shushed when Hermann realized that they were speaking.

\---

“And I think, you know, if we rewire the coils you had, it should be enough to dampen degradation loop caused by premature decomposition,” Dr. Geislzer answered, standing below the camera that was directly above his terminal. He almost looked at it. _Hello_ , he thought. _Can you see?_ He was rolling up his sleeves to match Kaelyn, smiling to himself, eyes cast down at the computer he would occasionally reach to type at.

“Assuming we got the sequencing right,” Miss Turner answered, flashing her teeth. She was pleased. Dr. Geislzer appeared pleased. She bounced on her toes and if he turned to look, Newton might have a sudden flash of a young Mako Mori in the LOCCENT Shatterdome lab, looking over the schematics of the Mark 2 with Hermann nearby. Hermann was still nearby. Newton shook his head and grinned again when he felt Miss Turner step closer, her hands clasped behind her back. He was Dr. Geiszler. _Dr. Geiszler_ turned around and grinned at the young woman with tight shoulders and an even step. Everything put in order. Definitely someone in the family was military.  “A question, Dr. Geiszler.”

“Yeah, Turner. Shoot.”

“How are we even going to test your theory?”

“Ah. See. I always like that. You don’t just _ask_ questions.” He pointed and motioned for her to follow him. They were leaving the perimeter of the camera above his desk, which was fine. There was another to the left, one in the hallway, and a fourth one over the spiral staircase that lead down to the second level. “You ask the _right_ questions. That’s why I brought you on board.”

Praise helped. These creatures did seem to thrive on it and just a little pressure put them in the right mood to slip into the order that was prescribed for them.

“I gotta ask,” he said, flipping a switch to illuminate the second level, a smaller space than the one above with another viewing tank directly out into the ocean. Dark waters with a halo of floodlamps from above to give them a sense of the terrible depths waiting just beyond the partition. “How many drift sequences have you preformed?”

“Oh, like, real world applications?” Miss Turner asked, following him down. Dr. Geiszler noticed that she glanced over at the tank, the little twitch of unease wrinkling her face before she used her or her father’s or her brother’s or somebody’s military training to dampen down her outward appearances of fear. “I mean, I tried a simulation, but it wasn’t anything like the Jaeger Program for pilots. We didn’t have another entity on the other side. Computer simulation.”

“Oh!” Dr. Geiszler clapped his hands, scrubbed them together, and motioned towards the room. “I gotta have you meet Hermann!”

\---

The recording was empty for four hours and thirty-seven minutes after Newton and the woman walked off screen. Hermann checked the other feeds, watching them go down into the basement. He sped the recording up, wondering why there wasn’t another camera for the second half of the lab beneath them, when a flurry of movement caught his attention and he started playing it again at regular speed.

It was clearly Newton, stumbling up towards the terminal, holding onto his head like it might split open any second. He crashed into the first desk behind them, jarring it across the metal floor nearly twelve inches. He caught and righted himself, leaving a bloody handprint. Jake turned to look, but the desk was back in order, the hand print washed off a long time ago.

“Okay,” he was saying, his voice muffled and clogged with static in the recording. “Okay. So. Needs…needs readjust… _fuck_.” Newton wiped his hand under his nose, leaving a bloody streak in its wake. “Ah, Herms, I’m real tired of this part.” He sniffled, wiped again, using his other hand to stem the flow from his left nostril. He looked up, blinking at nothing. There was a hyphema around his left and right pupil, staining the whites a shocking red. His hand trembled and he closed his eyes, held it there a moment, pressing his lips together. “Okay.” Another sniffle. “Okay. Herms, I—” He blinked and looked up, scowling before the feed went dead.

It wasn’t the last recording. It was hardly even to the middle. Hermann felt his chest tighten as he closed out the file, looking down the list at the dates, sporadic chunks of data. He clicked on another one, simply because he had to.

“So, did you think Hermann was with you…or?” Jake asked, looking back at Newton, who had flipped ahead in the journal, shaking his head slowly to himself. He didn’t even look up. The sound of his voice on the recording made him hunch over more, shrinking away from it. “And what happened with—”

“Oh, no. No no no. No, uh, shit.” Newton, in the recording, was leading a gentleman into the lab, this one holding a knife on Newton, who didn’t seem as bothered by that as he was of the fact that the man was slapping at the console. “Course it has to be fucking Chinese. Uh. Okay.”

\---

For someone who appeared to enjoy academia as much as this one did, Dr. Geiszler did not have the head for linguistics. He did not have the head for many things, but that was neither here nor there. Not for him. Not for now. He struggled to pick up the language, even though he had taken a position with Shao Industries, and the reasoning behind that was a little muffled, but it was brilliant work. Of course, picking up a Kaiju fanatic seemed ideal at this point, and perhaps a little practice with the language would get Liwen Shao off his case.

“That’s it,” Dr. Geiszler said, coaxing the individual to follow him. There was something delightful about the man, that he would blindly worship the destruction of “gods” from another plane of existence, coming down to smite and lay waste because it was their will. This gentleman would sacrifice anything to expel his sins and see favor in the eyes of his masters. “ _Shì de, zhèyàng. Lái miàn duì shàngdì_.”

“ _N_ _ǐ y_ _ǒu sh_ _àngd_ _ì ma? Zh_ _èl_ _ǐ? R_ _úgu_ _ǒ n_ _ǐ z_ _àic_ _ì s_ _āhu_ _ǎng w_ _ǒ hu_ _ì—_ ”

“ _Shì. Shì a. Bùshì piànjú_.” Dr. Geiszler smiled, averting his eyes. Mr. Hsu Jing-sheng had a higher proclivity for attempted stabbings with the kaiju bone fragment he had been carrying when Dr. Geiszler met his eye. Of course, promises to meet “God” got him turned around and he was a little better at following along. Smart man. Terribly stupid man, actually. Who would be so vain to try and meet God?

“I don’t wanna have to do this again, Herms,” Dr. Geiszler said and shook his head. “Sorry. Sorry, of course. No. Just, I’d really like to, uh, _not_ have to speak Chinese while we get the samples started. I know. Alice has been nagging me for weeks to get a supplier. You know how it goes.” He smiled again at Mr. Hsu, nodding emphatically as they walked down the staircase. “Okay. Yep, right this way. _Zhè tiáo lù_.”

\---

Mark 2 had a higher neural dampener to override the molecular degradation. Three notes, two of them in familiar handwriting, the other in one you don’t recognize. You hardly recognize your own, but something in the slant of the “ts” and the curve of the “ns” That’s you. You live in there. Your head is forced down, but you live in there. The other one, though. That woman with the military father. The student who was hoping to help her brother with early onset Alzheimer’s. The disease a shadow hanging overhead with the warning that it could swing down and cut off her head too.

But you did that for her.

Mark 3 had a sleeker design, after you figured out how to program the interface into a streamlined processer.

Mark 4. You didn’t use Mark 4 here. Mark 4 was collected with all your other belongings and scooped up with that tank it was attached to. _Hello_ , _Alice. Nice to see you, Alice. Thank you for the comfortable headband, Alice. The design is probably the only thing that kept you from burning holes in your brain._ Oh god.

Stop watching. Stop watching, this was a mistake. This was a mistake!

\---

Hermann clicked ahead, a man possessed. He clenched his fist up against his chest as he scrolled through the histories.

Mr. Hsu returned. He was a feature in the videos for four months. He lifted equipment, he helped Newton bring in kaiju samples in hermetically sealed containers, then took them apart, sometimes dragging them downstairs.

Downstairs.

They should look, but Hermann couldn’t get up. He felt like he was welded to the chair. Jake pressed in too, fascinated by the little world that was unfolding on the screen. Hermann clicked ahead, advancing it by a year only to see a woman suddenly in Mr. Hsu’s place. She performed the same tasks and their interactions hardly changed than what they were from Mr. Hsu, but it was so obviously a different person. And nothing. Nothing to transition. Just that one day it was him, next it was her. The two worked endlessly. Hermann clicked on a random video and they were both at the desks, bent over and eating mechanically. Newton perked up and said, “I still think we could bridge the distance if we forced the muscle growth on….well, I’m just saying.” He chewed and didn’t seem bothered by his own conversation at all. The woman said nothing. He just nodded and set down his fork. “Probably right. Alright. Just don’t tell Alice.”

“This is fucking creepy, mate,” Jake said, leaning on his forearm to get closer. “Who the fuck’s he talking to?”

Hermann’s throat was dusty, same as the equipment, same as the surface of the tank. He couldn’t even pretend to have an answer.

\---

Stop watching. Stop watching. God, this was a mistake. This—

Those weren’t words. You blink. You can read them, but they aren’t…they aren’t words. They aren’t words from _here_. What’s that thing again?

“Not of this world?”

Oh god. Don’t panic. Don’t panic, just…but you can read it! You can read it because you wrote it! Slanted lines that don’t mean anything. That look like dash marks. That look like a maze. Christ. Christ, stop watching. Stop—

\---

“Here’s the thing.” Newton stood in the center of the room, clearly looking out at the tank and the ocean ahead of him. He licked his lip, rolling up the sleeves of his black shirt before he began to unbutton it from neck to stomach. “It’s always going to be difficult, transitioning to new people. There’s a lot incongruencies to work out. Personalities. Dynamics. You gotta learn a little give and take.”

Newton sniffled, wiped his nose against his forearm. He looked and made sure it was just a phantom nose bleed, shrugging before he finished down the row of buttons and stepped closer to the window. Almost directly where Hermann was sitting now, watching him, three years in the future.

“It’s a radical shift, every time. And, I’ll be honest, hon, it’s _exhausting._ ” He laughed, turning to look back. Someone else was standing over by the desk, adding a note in the journal that Newton was reviewing now, a footnote in the margin. He nodded, as though encouraging Newton to continue. “You know? You know. This guy gets it.”

The man behind him did not laugh and it wasn’t entirely clear if Newton was even talking to him. He breathed deeply, facing the tank again.

“Now, I’m trying to get this to work, Alice. I really am. I get that we almost had it with Er, you know, but….” He laughed, pushing his shirt open. The tattoos were clean in the recording, stretched across his skin without a blemish in sight.

\---

Stop. Stop. Stop stop _stop stop **stop**_

\---

“This isn’t helping,” Jake said, pushing away. “This is just creepy. Newt, mate, you can either stay here with Gottlieb, or you can come with me and see what we can find downstairs, yeah?” Newton didn’t look up from his journal, shaking his head just a little, back and forth. “Stuff it. You two know where I’ll be. Meet me when you’re done watching all this shit, yeah?” He looked back at Hermann and clicked his tongue. “Fine.”

Hermann was distantly aware of Jake’s departure, of his boots clanging on the stairs as he descended to the second level of the lab. He wanted to turn in the chair and call out to him. Something about how they shouldn’t split up, or that they should review the data on the videos first, compile what they knew, and compare it to what they had found. Or would find. Something. Something like that. Made…. Sense.

Hermann also wanted to turn around and scoop up Newton and hold him and just leave. Just leave this terrible place of disjointed, uncomfortable memories and sacrifice and pain and just go. Forget finding answers. Forget, period. Erase the data and burn the evidence on their way out. Clean and clear.

But Newton on the screen laughed and he glanced up, directly into the camera, directly into Hermann’s eyes, and Hermann gasped like something cold and dead had pressed against the back of his neck.

“I still think he’d help,” said the recorded Newton as he held up a thin surgical scalpel. “I just wish…I wish you’d let me, Alice. I.”

He grinned, and dug the first line down his chest, looking back out towards the ocean.

“Because. He always….”

The letter was a red brand before it spilled quickly down his chest, a ribbon painting his pec down to his hip bone where it soaked into his trousers. He laughed a little lighter this time, almost hyperventilating. Shock by what he had done? Hermann was shocked. He didn’t even think he was breathing.

“Well, Alice, he let me play music, for one. And that helps. Me think.”

He grimaced, adding a short-curved letter next to it, his thumb pad white against the metal handle of the tool. It was difficult trying to make sure that the letter faced the right direction. The “r” slashed much faster, but “m” had bumps and valleys to it. It was added effort, the same with the serif on the “a” that followed.

“And I think…that would help with the next one. A little. Music.”

Herman had pressed his fist so tight to his chest that it trembled. His lips were sucked in between his teeth, bloodless. He kept thinking _stop. Stop! Stop stop stop!_

\---

_Stop stop stop stop stop_

\---

Newton sighed when the final “n” joined up with the others and dropped the scalpel onto his terminal. He bent over, breathing hard, until the man behind him got up and handed him a towel he had ready. Newton looked at him, confused, grateful, then back to annoyed. “Yeah. Alright. Alright, let’s go visit him, then,” he was saying as he mopped up his chest. “Yes, Alice. Sorry. I meant you, of course. H—”

The screen went black.

Hermann blinked, clearing the fuzziness from his eyes. He tried to focus on anything beyond the thin frame where the videos had projected before he felt arms around him. A warm was body pressed up along his spine and the weight of a familiar face in his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Newton whispered in his ear. Just like that, the two of them cracked open. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Hermann answered, reaching up to clutch Newton’s shoulders, his face. He wanted to turn, but Newton’s body weight had him pinned. He was shaking already with tears. Maybe that was Newton. Maybe that was both. “No. Oh _, meine einzige liebe._  God, no, I—”

“I’m sorry,” Newton said again, more insistently, his voice thick and heavy and wet on his skin. Same as Hermann’s tongue became thick. Same as Hermann’s hands became heavy. Same as Hermann’s eyes became wet and he whimpered something back at him, still holding his shoulders for as long as he could manage. A creeping darkness flooded up from the little pinprick pain in the back of his arm, the pinch he had assumed had been worried hands seeking him. “I’m sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Shì de, zhèyàng. Lái miàn duì shàngdì.” — Yes, this way. Come face God.  
> “Nǐ yǒu shàngdì ma? Zhèlǐ? Rúguǒ nǐ zàicì sāhuǎng wǒ huì” – Do you have God? If you’re lying to me, I will—  
> “Shì. Shì a. Bùshì piànjú.” – Yes. Yeah. Not trick.  
> “Zhè tiáo lù.” – This way.
> 
> (I just ran this through google so I apologize that it's really really wrong. It has been literally years since I've had to use Chinese and, as it turns out, I don't remember any of it.)


	19. I Can Read It!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake must deal with Newton after he's gone and knocked Hermann out. Newton's pretty sure something is wrong and he has a solution, he just needs Jake to play along.

Jake thumbed open his cell phone, merely on habit. No bars. No service. Obviously. But he did it anyways, hoping for a quick text from Jules or Nate saying “howdy” and “we miss you,” and “look, I snapped a pic of Nate while he was sleeping. What a fuckin’ tosser. I figured you needed a laugh.” Except it would just be his sexy sleepy face with Jules cropped to the side saying “sweet dreams, asshole” with a little heart emoji next to it.

Yeah, well. Jake would take any of that. He needed it.

The staircase was narrow with a tight radius as it descended into the second half of the lab. Not that he was currently a prime concern, but Jake had to wonder how Gottlieb up there was gonna navigate the stairs. Probably easier that they were spiraled, honestly. Could kick up his hip against the railing and just slide down. Jake pushed his hip against it and gave it a shot, standing back up when he heard the metal groan. Okay. Or not.

The basement dropped out into a wide, dark space. The only illumination came all the way over from the north side where the sunlight through the ocean and the floodlamps up above shone through a huge glass display. Jake, a man who had fought literal monsters, still felt a creeping sickness up from his belly at the potential Bogeyman waiting in the shadows.

“Fuckin’ unsettlin’,” he muttered and flapped a hand against the wall, pawing around for a light switch. He found a panel just as steps overhead drew his attention.

“Hey, man.” Jake looked up to see Newt peering down from the top of the staircase. “How’s it going down there?”

Jake’s hand slipped off the wall and went to the railing, so he could lean back and stare up at him. “Ain’t even started. Get Gottlieb and come down here.”

Newton tipped away, stretching out of view until his head suddenly popped back in.

“You find anything?” he asked, and started down the stairs, skipping them two at a time.

“Nah. Like I said, just started. Trying to find the lights.” Jake didn’t want to go into the dark. Look, aliens were real. And real aliens meant shit like Xenomorphs could just, you know, _exist_. And this was all prime real-estate for an old as fuck and creepy as hell movie monster to be picking around. “Ey. Get Gottlieb. We shouldn’t split up.”

“He’s fine,” Newton said, already halfway down, his boots stomping on the staircase. “He’s still moping about the videos.”

“And you don’t remember none of that?”

“Mm.” Newt took the last three in an overconfident leap, misjudging the distance and reaching out to grab Jake before he went flat on his face. He righted himself, gripping Jake’s arm, a sheepish grin on his scruffy face. “Sorry. Thanks. Also, no. No. I don’t remember. That’s why we’re here.” He patted Jake’s arm, one two.

“Yeah, fine.” Jake shrugged, feeling some of dear old dad’s old “Don’t touch me,” sneaking in. He turned out of Newton’s reach, rubbing his arm. “Where’s the lights ‘round here?”

“Isn’t it weird?” Newton said as he stretched and slapped the panel that Jake had found earlier, punching in one of the switches. A light warmed on over them, not quite reaching a three feet radius.

“What’s weird?” Jake finally prompted, since it seemed like Newton was gonna go on ahead and explain himself and then just…didn’t. What’s worse was that Newton started to step away, to go into the dark, and Jake went “nuh-uh,” and pushed him back towards the wall. Newt was not taking the lead, thank you.

Jake looked around, noticing a few more gurneys and crates stacked up. Looked even more rundown down here than it did upstairs. More cramped, too. Like this was just storage space. But Jake had watched Newt come down here with his “guests” in those videos. There had to be a reason.

“Just throw ‘em all on, Geezer. Can’t see for shit down here,” he prompted, walking just out of the reach of the lights.

Newt shook his head but said nothing as he flipped on the rest of the switches.

Jake had been right through the first assumption. Storage space. Crates lined up, half of them empty shells that had housed the kaiju remains they had studied upstairs. Some said remains were still waiting, hermetically sealed and stamped and stacked up in the collection. It was a gold mine of kaiju resources, honestly. PPDC would likely love to get their hands on it. Well, maybe not their k-science division, since that was headed by Gottlieb these days, but…maybe? Jake stepped carefully through the maze, spotting two cots next to a toilet and sink.

“Jesus,” he whispered. “This looks worse than prison.”

“You would know?” Newton asked, walking up close beside him. He tried once again to get in front, but Jake held out his arm and pushed him back. “What? Can’t trust me?”

“Gottlieb trusts you,” Jake said offhandedly. “That’s who I trust.”

Newton made a short, coughing sound. Almost a laugh. Maybe a laugh. Jake eyed him as they stepped through the mess, coming round to an open space at the very back of the lab. He was going to ask if Newt was alright when his shin bumped into a table and he turned back, holding his fist up in preparation.

His hand went slack.

And he dropped his arm.

Newt was next to him in a flash, leaning in too close, his face hovering next to Jake’s shoulder. He looked…like nothing. Blank. Maybe shock. Jake wore his shock a little more plainly with an open mouth and wide eyes, but not everyone was as handsome and expressive as he was by a mile.

“There he is.”

Of course, the only thing that Newton could possibly be referring to was the huge tank standing in the back of the lab, neon yellow fluids cradling the kaiju brain floating inside. There was a smear of a word across the middle of the tank, the beginning of an “A” that had been scratched off and made to look like an “H.” The rest of the letters were faded, written over so that “L I C E” blended in with “E R M” and made a sloppy mess.

It would be remiss to not note the fact that two sets of wires came off the tank, connected to two old as fuck PONs units waiting on a set of surprisingly comfortable looking chairs. Perhaps the only comfortable furniture in the whole of the base.

Jake turned and grabbed Newton’s collar, pushing him up against one of the nearby crates with a padded “thud.”

“Did you fuckin’ drift with this thing too?”

“Once,” Newton answered, scrambling to hold onto Jake’s hands. “Turner. I needed her help.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t remember none of this,” Jake whispered.

“Yeah. Memory’s a funny fuckin’ thing, Jake.” Newton went still, grabbing hold of Jake’s arm tightly. “You can trigger memories with anything. Sound. Smell. Fuck, I _saw_ it on the fucking monitors. I have journals upstairs, dude. Her handwriting. My handwriting.” He shifted again, reaching into his coat and Jake shook him before he pulled out the journal he had been reading upstairs. He held the pages open and tapped an index finger on the short scribbles. “What’s this say?”

“I don’t—” Jake jerked his head away only for Newt to push the journal closer.

“What’s this _say_?”

Jake squinted at it, looking at the hash marks and the weird lines. Like a maze. He twitched his head again, looking around the journal at Newton, who looked like he was close to tears.

“I don’t know, mate. Nothing. It don’t look like anything.”

Newton snapped the book shut, squeezing his eyes closed and slumped down. He’d be on the ground if Jake wasn’t holding him up. He dropped the journal, instead pushing his fist up against his forehead.

“Hey,” Jake said, and shook him. “Don’t go loony on me yet. Alright?”

“They’re formulas,” Newt muttered.

“What?”

“They’re _formulas_ ,” Newt answered more insistently.

“Look, I don’t know—”

“They’re formulas, you idiot!” Newt punched a fist into Jake’s shoulder and lunged up with surprising force, knocking him slightly off balance. Jake stumbled back, caught himself on the crate. He stood up, reading to knock Newt off his block if he had to. Newt paced in a short loop near the kaiju brain. “They’re the codes to download our very own kaiju, man. They’re the blueprints. That one.” He pointed at the scattered mess on the floor, the hazy marks twisting in sharp angles on each other. “That one is for the ligaments that attach the forearm to the biceps of your everyday, garden variety fucking Otachi-looking motherfuckin’ _kaiju_. Two pages ahead. That’s the brain. Exactly how to build yourself your own....” Newton grabbed a fistful of his hair and breathed a sharp, whistling inhale, another choking sound. “Hermann,” he whispered. “Hermann.”

“Newt—”

“I can read it!” Newton shrieked with a high-strung, feathery laugh. “I can read all of that. Do you know why?”

“Listen,” Jake said calmly, not moving so he didn’t just suddenly set Newt off. “Why don’t we go back upstairs. We’ll get Gottlieb. We’ll head back to Sydney where we can all just…figure this shit out, yeah?”

“No,” Newt answered quickly.

“No? Why?”

“No!”

Newt rushed forward and shoved Jake over the crates, knocking him off his feet. He scrabbled to hold onto Newt’s shirt, take him down with him, but a crate crashed down onto his torso and knocked the wind clean out of him. Another banged against his leg, mercifully empty, but the shock of it made him yell like he’d broken it. He struggled to get up, pushing debris off, ignoring the warning pings of pain in his head, ribs, back, hips, shin. He chucked something heavy and it flopped a foot or so away from him, getting nowhere. _Christ_ but everything hurt. His head was singing something terrible and he tried to get up only to see the unmistakable black hole of a gun to his head.

For a moment. For a moment, Jake forgot how to breathe.

Yeah, okay, he’d been here before. Not the first time somebody pulled a piece on him. And his brain was a little fuzzy, but he’d lived all the way up until now without getting shot, so. There was a way out. There was a way to run.

“Geiszler,” Jake whispered, wincing, clapping a hand instantly to his side. “Listen. Let’s chill.”

“I can read it,” Newton whispered, and it was then that Jake noticed the little gun—not even a gun, man, that was a tranquilizer with a flat black muzzle and a short grip; mistakeable for a gun but definitely nothing with a bullet—was trembling. Newt was trembling. “I can read what they made me write. Which means they’re still in there. And _fuck_ everyone pretending I was clean. I’m not.”

“Okay,” Jake said slowly, trying to find a more comfortable position to lay down in the mess Newton had shoved him into. He shrugged, regretted that, closing his eyes and letting everything settle until he could breathe without trouble. “Hey. It’s okay. Gottlieb—”

“Shut up!”

Newton stepped away to go over to the tank with the kaiju brain. He looked up at it, going still, transfixed. Jake watched him like a turtle on it’s back, hands swimming for purchase on rubble so he could spring up to his feet and fucking run-tackle Newt to the ground. Hell, Nate was able to knock him out with a good punch to the face. Jake could do something similar. Assuming he didn’t get jabbed with a tranq on his way over. Maybe adrenaline would carry him all the way and he could go to the stairs and shout up for Hermann and he’d take care of this. Radio back to Sydney. Nate would show up with his grizzly handsome face and be all, “Couldn’t trust you with those two k-scientists, could I?” and he’d kiss Jake’s bruises all better.

Wait.

Fuck.

“Newt,” Jake said, sitting up at last. He ignored Newton spinning on a dime and raising his little gun again. Nope, let him poster all he wants, Jake was sitting up. He tested the stability of a big metal case nearby and sat on it, nearly collapsing. “Where’s Hermann?”

Yep. That was the question.

It was right ugly to watch Newton crumple in on himself, folding in like aluminum. His hands dropped, came up to his chest, where he pushed one of his palms into his sternum. He looked, poor bastard, so lost. Confused. Honestly scared. Were those crocodile tears? Were those real?

“Where’s Hermann, mate?” Jake asked again, snapping his attention back.

Newt raised the barrel back on Jake. He was far enough away he could likely miss, but Jake didn’t want to risk it. Not yet. Give him another moment to recover, please.

“Listen,” Newt started, but his voice cracked. He had to clear his throat before he tried again. “Listen, okay? You’re going to say ‘no,’ but I need a ‘yes.’”

“Okay,” Jake said, resting his elbows on his knees. “For what?”

Newt sniffled and turned around, running fingers through his hair. He was whispering to himself. Short words in an even pattern. Jake turned his head and realized the poor bastard was reassuring himself. He reached out and thumbed the glass below the smudged names he’d painted there who knows how long ago.

“I, uh. I’m gonna drift with Herms.”

“Where is—”

“I’m gonna need you to let us do that,” Newt interrupted, spinning around and walking closer, once again aiming right at Jake. The closer he got, the better his aim. Jake sat up, holding his arms up. Sure, he knew it was a tranquilizer, but you can’t escape the simple fact that a _gun_ pointed at a _black man_ was just real fucking bad news. That awful racial profiling never got smoothed over. People fucking sucked. And Jake liked to relish it took a black man and a punk ass kid and a Chinese woman to save the fucking world, mate, but people still sucked. Shit was in the news for decades, trailing on and on and on. He’d argue a gun pointed at _anyone_ was bad, but that wasn’t the situation, was it?

“You gonna hook him up to your brain over there?” Jake asked softly, staring pointedly at Newt’s hand.

“What?” Newt scoffed, wiping quickly at his face. “No. That’s insane. That thing’s dead, for one. For two, when it _was_ alive, it’d probably end up killing Hermann. Sharing the neural load with the hivemind is hell. Sharing it with an imperfect cloned copy was near deadly. It definitely killed…fuck you. I’m not trying to kill him. I’m not going to kill him. I’m not going to kill anyone.”

“Anyone else, you mean?”

“Fuck you,” Newt hissed, but Jake could see he regretted it. It was eating him up.

“So, where is he?” Jake asked.

Newt licked his lips, wide eyes unfocused. Poor bastard was unhinged. Not just looked like he was, he just _was_. He’d cracked. Pity they didn’t see it sooner, actually. Jake could kick himself. He’d let Nate and Jules kick him for it when he got back. Yeah, _when_. Not _if_. He refused to be defeatist about this. Not right now.

“I need your help,” Newt said only to get an ugly laugh in his face.

“That’s for sure. Where to start? Y—”

“Look, I’ll knock you out and do this on my own, but it would be easier and faster if I had your help. Okay?”

Jake stretched until his back popped in three places. He let his joints settle with a barely suppressed groan. His mind settled. Find the calm. Focus. No use fighting flashes of Mako and dear old Dad in the dojo with him, helping him channel all that prepubescent energy and rage into skills with a bo staff. He could do this.

“Okay,” Jake said and slowly stood up. “Only cause you asked so sweetly, Geezer.”

“I will fucking e—”

Jake took a step closer, jutting up his chin just so, squaring his shoulders to the best of his ability. He didn’t move closer. He didn’t raise a fist. He just stood there and said, “Then do it.”

\---

He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay. You’ve done this before—not that that’s _good_ , just that it _is_ , and at the very least you know you have supplies available around here for _people_ and not just sedatives to take out a _whale_ or, you know, a kaiju hybrid—and when you both go up the stairs, you know what you’ll see. Hermann, stretched out on the gurney, breathing evenly. Sleeping. You can pray it’s a dreamless sleep if you want. You can pretend it’s dreamless. You can even hope it isn’t and it’s the colorful nightmares you almost feel at home in, the very ones you’re going to drop down into and find Hermann and just….

What?

What are you going to do in there?

Well, you’re infected with Precursors. They haven’t said anything, but they didn’t always say anything. They haven’t frozen your body to the spot, but they didn’t always take full control. They were sneaky. They’re just being sneaky again, that’s all. If you can read that literal, absolute nonsense in the journals, you can see through their eyes. They’re in there. And you’re in trouble. And you need help. And, fuck, who’s going to help you?

Hermann.

God, please, Hermann. God, who doesn’t exist, but you pray to him like he does out of some misplaced hope. Please. Please. You pray to Hermann. You pray to Hermann on the gurney, not Hermann in the jar downstairs, the false idol that the kaiju cultists prostrated in front of and gave up everything for. Who always ended up back out in the ocean when their bodies couldn’t keep up with their precious god. Their cloned god. Their imperfect god. When they couldn’t keep up with you.

Fuck, just….

Okay, Hermann.

He looks peaceful. He really does. He looks dead. He looks dead how the dead look just like they’re sleeping, like they’re one in the same. You touch his chest and feel it rise and fall and you almost start crying again. Because you’re just so relieved. Because you just love him so much. And you failed him.

But you don’t start crying. Crying means impaired vision and if these Precursor bastards gave you one thing, it was a fucking surgery against your will that gave you disgustingly perfect eye sight. So…you know. Fuck them.

Every time Jake moves, you think about shooting him. Because he can stop you. He really can. You can fight him, and you can really mess him up, probably, but he’ll win if he gets the chance. Look, they made you at least a little formidable, those Precursor fucking assholes. Look, they put on muscles! Look! They made you faster! Better! Stronger! 6-million-dollar man, right here—ha, you’re worth more than that. You…were worth more than that. You wonder if they froze your assets.

No. C’mon. Focus.

Hermann.

Hermann on the gurney.

Hermann on the gurney and over to the stairs and guiding them down, back down, down down down to the belly of the beast. Down we go. Jake down first. Hermann second. You third.

\---

“What do you need me to do?” Jake asked after they finished carrying Hermann back downstairs. No easy feat, neither, but he was doing what Newt said because, at least right now, the nutter was in charge. Fine. Know what happens when a person goes down in a controlled Drift? They knock the fuck out and _then_ Jake can make a move.

“Nothing,” Newt said, guiding the gurney over towards the back with the kaiju brain in its greasy-looking concoction. “I’ve done this, Jesus, way too many times.” Newt rolled his eyes and locked the wheels in place, a hand trailing over Hermann’s arm again. “I know how to pull myself up for extraction. I just…need you to… _not_ interfere.”

Jake almost crossed his fingers behind his back. Almost.

“You still have that thing hooked up to your tank over there.”

“Yeah, I know,” Newt snapped back. He motioned for Jake to step away, then turned around and pointed him to sit in the chair Hermann would have been in if he wasn’t already strapped down to the gurney. “Sit.”

“I’m not gonna—”

“Oh my god, dude.” Newt laughed humorlessly, walking closer to him until the tranq gun was pressed into Jake’s chest. Jake put his hands right up again, backing up to get away from the uncomfortable pressure of the barrel opening against his skin. “He’s down here. I don’t need you anymore! Sit. Down!”

“Yeah, alright. Sitting down. Awesome,” Jake said quickly and stepped back until he was in the chair.

Newt reached to the side and placed straps on his wrists, ignoring his protests. When Jake almost kicked out, Newt moved the tranq up to his neck and his finger onto the trigger. That shut him up faster than a slap to the face.

“This is almost funny,” Newt said without smiling. He clicked another belt across Jake’s torso, then the ones that strapped down his knees. “Super uncomfortable, right? I should let you sit in that for, what, five weeks? Six weeks?”

“We didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did,” Newt answered and stepped back. He placed the tranq down on a stack of crates next to him, then straightened and put hands on his hips. “It’s okay. You had to do what you had to do. The world was ending. Yada yada yada. Believe it or not, I’m actually trying to prevent that. I’ve always thought I was trying to prevent that.”

Newt looked through Jake then, somewhere stretched out of reach, and Jake thought they lost him completely.

Well, until he blinked and shrugged and clapped his hands, all these little human gestures to reanimate himself.

“Alright, Herms. Let’s see what’s running under the hood, yeah?”

Newt disappeared behind Jake, who couldn’t even crane his neck to see what Newt was doing. He strained at the restraints because of course he did, wishing he’d have been less of an asshole and he could’ve brought anybody else with him. Hell, Amara could’ve been aces right about now. Oh, fuck, he was going to die in the basement of a nut-job’s lab, staring out at the cold and unforgiving black of the ocean. Because he’d been a bit of a prick and played too many jokes and Nate and Jules thought this was just gonna be easy as pie. Pie ain’t easy. Pie has many steps that can lead to disaster! Pie can suddenly be strapped down to a chair by a man who can scramble your brains forever with the flip of a switch and Jesus _Christ!_

Panic wasn’t helping. Panic never helped. Jake clamped his mouth shut and thought back to breathing exercises with Mako, with steps and motions and focus. _Focus, Jake. You’ll get out of this._

There were noises. Noises, like, of a wide variety. Struggling noises and mechanical noises and electrical ones and each one made Jake’s skin crawl with anticipation while he tried his damndest to settle himself. There was even the sound of something heavy against the glass case and some cursing before that was abandoned. Jake struggled through each jump and bump and curse, occasionally looking over at Dr. Gottlieb, who was out like a damn light. Lucky bastard. Mmm, maybe unlucky, considering what Newt was going to do to him.

And they’d been so sure he _was_ clean. All those tests. Damn shame.

“Okay,” Newt said finally, coming into sight as he fitted a slightly retro-looking PONs unit to Hermann’s scalp. He paused, his thumbs dragging up and down Hermann’s sharp cheekbones. Jake strained to look over and swallowed a bitter laugh when Newt bent down and kissed Hermann’s forehead. Pretty bloody tender for a monster, actually. “Okay. You ready?”

“Newt, mate, we can still—”

Newt didn’t even look at him. He walked around again, took the opposite seat and sat down with a heavy sigh. There was a relay box in his hands, a simple two-button design to enter and exit the Drift. He looked at the thing in his hands, or perhaps used it as an anchor while his mind wandered wherever it was going. Far away. He closed his eyes, clearly blocking out Jake as he shouted Newt’s name and punched the button, slipping into the Drift like he was slipping into a bath. Backwards. That was being tipped over a cliff.


	20. Just Tell Me You Love Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newt and Hermann go into the drift to find some Precursors. Talk it out. Yell about how STUPID it was to drug Hermann, you idiot!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huzzah! A Drift! Also, I wrote this as a MUUUCH longer chapter and decided to break up this one and the next one where we have Jake, so just know that one is almost done and will be coming out shortly.

_You can’t lie in the drift._

-

_You fall._

-

_Brash, unbridled excitement as the letter shakes in your hands. As it is plucked out, is flattened out on the table. Uncle presses in, big warm hands on your shoulder, Dad’s bright smile cracking wide across the kitchen table._

“…and, holy _shit_ , Dad, we gotta frame it! Right? Cause how many times do you get accepted to MIT at the age of—”

_Uncle laughs and ruffles your hair. Because you’re still a kid, even if you are going off to college. You’re a kid. You’re a_ kid _and you don’t get to live in that age very long, do you? You push out of it, actually, and scramble forward. You fight. You do too much, sometimes. Who’s going to stop you, right? You want to_

-

“ _Leg deine hand nieder, mein sohn. Ich werde mich nicht wiederholen_.”

_It stings worse because of the shock of him striking you, but you close your fist and set it back into your lap underneath the table, steam still rising from the dinner plate._

 “ _Entschuldigung, Vater._ ”

“ _Ruhe jetzt._ ”

_You do not raise it again. You bow your head in prayer, the first time you thought God lied to you. Or not God, everyone else who believed in_

-

“Where are you?”

_-_

_The cold snaps at your side, digging into the stitches, and you swallow again. Again. Again._ Mein Gott _, will you ever be able to_

-

“Oh, _fuck_.”

_Breathing hard. Breathing harder, skipping wildly from arousal to anger to fear to remorse to disgust. It’s a fucking high, man. A trip. A stumble. You float just above the surface of your body, crashing down from the seat as Alice, ha, Alice, Jesus, Alice just_

-

“No, _mein Schatz._ Not that one.”

( _I’m sorry_ )

“Just not that one. I don’t want to see you with—”

( _I’m sorry_ )

-

“Where are you?”

-

“Why?” _You lick your lips and look back up at him_. _Your heart close to breaking, you love him so. So long you two have lived and breathed in the same space. So long that you were apart, too, and you almost didn’t make it through that. Almost. But he is here, now. Can you ever let him go again? Why would you want to?_ “Why’re you putting in that request?”

“Because they’ll deny it,” _he answers simply. He strokes your hair, rubs your chest, and you want to melt into him. You think you’ve always wanted to melt into him. Even through the pain and the hardship. He is here. And that is all you could ever ask for._

_(Don’t leave me again, Newton._ )

“Then I’ll put in another request.”

( _I’m trying to find you._ )

“They’ll deny it. I’m really hoping third times the charm, but, I doubt I get to go, period. Maybe with a contingency. I mean, if Jake and Nate like to play babysitters, maybe they could—”

-

“Are you hiding?”

-

“Newton?”

-

“Please. Please, where are you? Hermann?”

\---

The dark….

Is….

Was….

….

Is.

Not warm. It was not particularly cold either. There was a sense of oppressive nothingness, an absence of something, while standing in the middle of the k-science lab back in LOCCENT. Years since he’d had a chance to grace these halls, and yet, after all this time at the Moyulan Shatterdome, it was as easy as slipping into a pair of comfortable, well-worn shoes.

“Oh, thank Christ.”

When Hermann turned, the walls shimmered as the two of them synced up their memories of when and where they were in the lab. He had to close his eyes, which did nothing to stop the distortion or his ability to see it. Their neural handshake finding the bridge. Connecting. If he could have had a moment to let it settle, he might—

Newton collided into him, arms wrapped around his torso. They knew Hermann would need to brace himself against the desk behind him, hand grappling for his cane, but here? In the Drift? He simply took the brunt of Newton’s weight and held him up, crushing him to his chest. He could easily lift him, spin him around, and set him up on the desk.

( _You’re a fucking romantic sap, dude._ )

( _I’m very cross with you, Newton!_ )

( _You don’t look like you are. Kiss me like you keep thinking already._ )

“What in the _hell_ have you been doing up there, Newton?” Hermann asked instead, holding Newton out at arm’s length. He scowled. His very best scowl. He _was_ furious, but a man could think and feel many things at once. Newton was doing it just then, too, and the thoughts buzzed between them. “You drugged me!”

“God, yeah, I did.” Newton slapped at Hermann’s arm and came back in again, pushing his face into Hermann’s chest. “I made so many mistakes. I did so much. Hermann. Please.”

( _Help me_.)

Hermann was about to shove him off again and force him to have his conversation face to face—mind-to-mind, honestly—but he could not help reaching up and running his fingers through Newton’s soft overgrown hair, the curls splitting over his fingertips. He sighed, trying to sound put out or resigned to his fate. A mere gesture that meant nothing when they were imagining all of this.

“Gestures can mean everything,” Newton said softly, his voice wet against Hermann’s chest. “Body language is as much a form of communication as—”

“Why did you do this?” Hermann asked instead. “Why did you…why are you upset about that journal?”

They both tuned their faces towards the desk where Newton’s blue journal was resting, as though it had been there the entire time. The pages were slightly crumpled, feathering on the well-worn edges, with a few loose pieces of parchment scattered to the left and right of it. The page was turned to the one that Newton knew, somehow, was the beginning map on how to clone a kaiju brain.

“I can read that,” he said, and as he said it, the lines shifted, grew upon themselves in a translucent, 3D image of the kaiju brain it represented. “I understand. And that means—”

( _No, it doesn’t_.)

“Why do you think that means—”

( _Precursors, dude._ )

( _Yes, I understand that._ )

“Because how? How can I read it if—”

“How did you know how to upgrade your home PONs unit for Alice?” Hermann asked, waving a hand through the projected kaiju brain until it blinked out. Newton was already thinking of the schematics of the PONs technology, what he had learned over the years, what he had studied, what he had gleaned from Hermann during their Drift, what he had stolen from…. “What happened to that woman?”

The room shifted. They were in the comfort of the lab, their first shared space, the place where they both felt more at home than anywhere in the world, it seemed, or the very least enough to anchor them before they slipped through each other’s memories with a reckless abandon.

( _I refuse to let us go about this at a reckless abandon, Newton_.)

( _Just tell me you love me, dude. Please._ )

The room slipped away, coalescing into the shapes that belonged to Newton’s Russian lab. Everything was clean and neatly put away. The upstairs lab was fresh, with clear desks and far more soldering tools than scalpel and surgical. Downstairs was immaculate. Two segments of the lab set up for sleeping quarters, sectioned off with curtains, with the communal toilet wrapped up on its own space. Hermann could hear the echo of an apology from before.

“ _Yeah, sorry it’s all just out in the open for now. I promise, I’m getting contractors in here to, like, get the sleeping quarters and everything all ship shape. You won’t have to endure all this exposed nonsense for much longer_.”

“ _Oh, that’s alright, Dr. Geiszler_ ,” Miss Turner chirped back. “ _I’ve lived in dorms before._ ”

Newton, here, in the drift with him, recoiled from the thought. He stepped back, looked around, and tried to turn Hermann’s head away from the back of the lab where the memory of Newton and Kaelyn Turner were sitting in the reclining chairs. The trail of wires from the PONs units draped around them, firm metal clamps strapped to their heads. Newton held the relay box and was ready to punch the button.

“ _Trust me_ ,” Newton said in the chair.

“I needed her expertise,” Newton next to Hermann said. “She….”

( _I stole it from her, dude_. _Everything. Life. Everything. I—_ )

“Newton.”

The units started up and an electrical current hummed through the lines, igniting some animation in the kaiju brain. “Hermann.” Sometimes “Alice.” Poor thing jerked and slapped open-ended tentacles to the glass as Newton and Kaelyn Turner slipped into the Drift stream. And it was apparent something was terribly wrong by the way the two humans spasmed, leaking from their eyes. First tears. Then blood.

“I lowered the threshold specifically on hers,” Newton said as he recalled the details. “The whole reason we did this was because I needed a better unit to compensate for cloned tissue. She just, you know. Hemorrhaged out.”

“Newton,” Hermann tried again, grabbing his arm.

“Stupid to bring in someone like her. She had papers, man. She had credentials. I had to forge a travel itinerary and all and send her over to Jakarta at another research facility. Got it in that she boarded the plane and everything. Then put up a missing person report after a week. And then. Poof.” Newton pantomimed an explosion with his fingers, slipping out of Hermann’s hand so he could stand next to Miss Turner’s chair while she seized. “No more Kaelyn.”

“Newton.”

“I dumped her body in the ocean. So, theoretically, sure. Tiny, miniscule margin that, uh. Well. There might be some remains out there. But, even with the cold temperatures, uh, no.”

“You didn’t do this,” Hermann said harshly. He pulled back, both physically and mentally, so that the image of Newton’s lab darkened considerably. “The Precursor’s—”

“Yeah.” Newton glared at the ground, then up at the ceiling. “Yeah, where are those bastards, anyways? I know they’re in here.”

“Here? Newton.”

“Stop saying my name,” Newton shot back.

( _Don’t stop, Herms. Say it. Save me. Help me._ )

( _Don’t be melodramatic._ )

( _Say you love me._ )

“They’re _gone_ , Newton,” Hermann said and pulled Newton to him again, tipping them backwards until they were propped up on Hermann’s mattress, in the dim confines of his room. Back at the flat where he yearned to return to. “They’re gone. We’ve run numerous tests.”

“Tests lie, dude. Tests—”

“I was there. I went in when you were in the thick of it.”

There was a shadow over them and Newton sat up suddenly, a jolt running down his spine. He gripped Hermann’s hand so tightly he could break his bones.

( _They’re here._ )

( _No. A memory of a car passing._ )

“I know they’re here,” Newton said and crawled towards the foot of the mattress to peer over the edge, expecting to see the proverbial monster under the bed.

Hermann appeared next to him, his hands flat on the mattress, his legs kicked out behind them. The pair looked very young. Mere boys at a slumber party, hunting for cryptids, the thing that frightened them in the dark.

“I know they’re not,” Hermann answered, his voice soft with a slightly off accent to accommodate Bavarian vowels.

“How?” young Newton asked, his eyes wide and terrified, perfectly green with dark eye lashes. Not yet requiring those heavy black frames.

“Do you know, when I went into the Drift to come find you, it was nothing like this.” Hermann kicked his feet against the oversized mattress, a pair of pristine white tube socks on each foot. “There were no landmarks.”

“No. I suppose not,” Newton answered and rolled onto his back to look at the ceiling. Not the ceiling in their MegaTokyo flat, but the shorter ceiling back from his childhood, when Dad and Uncle Ilia helped him put up those glow-in-the-dark sticker stars. Uneven and imagined constellations made up the expanse of the spot above them. Hermann reached out, trying to shift them here and there to match up to the stars outside.

( _These are not accurate._ )

( _Oh, I’m sure, dude. I’m sure you had perfect star charts up on your ceiling._ )

( _Lars would never let me decorate the ceiling like that._ )

Newton rolled in against Hermann, touching his shoulder.

( _Let me stay in here. Please? Leave me here._ )

“I found you,” Hermann said, his voice dipping lower, finding the comfortable tenor of his adulthood as his limbs stretched in to fill out the adult he would come to be. “I will always. I will always find you. Even if you do end up drugging me. Which was very stupid, Newton.”

( _I’m sorry_.)

“I’m sorry,” Newton answered.

“Yes. Well. I suppose you have had a few traumatic experiences. You were lost in the center of a storm, my dear. You were…stuck. They had you pieced up.”

They each remembered Newton standing in the dark, with Precursors yelling their angry, endless demands. There commands were more a physical pressure than sound, the words bleeding into an incoherent mess. It pushed them down. Hermann thought he might buckle and when he woke up; there were several bruises down along his torso. But Newton. Newton, with too many eyes, his mouth stretched too far, his limbs bent and broken to make him up like the kaiju creatures he had studied so intently.

Newton aged beside Hermann too. They were wrapped up around each other, so they didn’t fall off the bed. Newton tucked in against Hermann’s shoulder and Hermann took an unnecessary pleasure at sliding his legs easily in around Newton’s.

( _You cut me out of them._ )

“Like a surgeon,” Hermann said, laughing.

( _You, like, punched through them_.)

“They disappeared. That’s all. They left.” Hermann stroked Newton’s hair, relishing the weight of him on his chest. Wishing it was real. “There was no direct contact with the source to keep the bond and our neural link broke it. End of story, as they say.”

“Hardly.”

“Well, yes. We started up a new chapter is all.”

“Herms?”

( _Tell me?_ )

“What ab—”

“Newton, they’re gone,” Hermann said as they slipped out of the bedroom, fell further, fell deeper, until they were draped on a grassy hill. Neither of them could remember where this memory came from. Both were happy to see the stars overhead. “They’re gone. I’ll follow you through every thought in this brilliant head of yours just to show you. I’ll turn over every rock. I’ll push aside every embarrassment and argument and dream. But they’re gone.”

They each sat up, resting their arms on their knees, one shoulder pressed in against the other man’s shoulder.

“I don’t know what to do,” Newton said with his head sloped down. “It’s a mess out there, Herms. I did so much shit.”

“Yes, I don’t think how you forced this drift was a wise choice.”

“I’m sorry.”

Hermann tilted, unclasping his hands so he could put one firmly on Newton’s back.

“It’s alright,” he said softly, rubbing a small circle with his palm. “It’s alright.”

“Is it? Jake’s gonna be pissed. I was already under surveillance. After this? I’m fucked. They kept San alive, dude! They….”

“We’ll take care of it,” Hermann said, only for Newton to shake his head.

“I don’t know.” He pushed up a corner of his face and a pair of thick framed glasses settled, completing the look of a tired, scruffy, bruised man. A lovely man. A soft, nearly broken man. “I don’t know how, y’know? I don’t…I don’t know how to trust myself. How can you forgive me?”

“Because I can.”

“Well, how can you trust me?”

“I trust you.” Hermann gripped Newton’s arm as he started to protest. “I know. You’ve proven that’s almost undoubtably a mistake. A mistake I am willing to make. Stop guessing why. It’s not codependency. Yes, well, it _is_ , but. I still believe you to be a good man, Newton. And it won’t be easy.”

“Fuck,” he whispered and dropped his head again, covering it with his forearms.

Hermann looked out at the sloping hills, stretching out away from them into the moonlit dark. This place was far too pretty to be one of his. Far too crisp to be one of Newton’s. Maybe they were dreaming.

( _You have the best dreams_.)

( _I only ever recall the nightmares_.)

( _Sorry._ )

“Recovery is difficult. That does not mean it is impossible. And I won’t let you do it alone. You’ll have me,” Hermann said hopefully. “That is to say, _if_ you’ll have me.”

Newton slowly perked up as the thoughts overlapped between them. He turned his head, confusion replaced by a wavering, hopeful smile.

“How long?” Newton asked, skeptical.

Hermann laughed again. He couldn’t help himself if he tried.

“You’re impossible sometimes, Newton. You do know we’ve spent more of our lives together than I have with some of my own relatives. I think I’d spend the rest of my life with you and be very happy for it. Very happy isn’t the right words; you can be aggravating with a few minutes and a pair of chopsticks. But, I think…I think I’d…like to be with you. For the rest of it.”

“Do you mean…like. Like…together, man? With you?”

Hermann tipped over and kissed his cheek. He brushed it down with his thumb immediately afterwards, as though planting the kiss into his skin as a momentum. “Together. Yes. With me. Newton, will you—”

The arms were around him before he could blink, spilling them down the hill. Newton tumbled with him and when they settled, he pushed up on his arms, laughing so hard he almost choked and looked down at Hermann pressed into the grass with an enthusiastic, “Yes!”

“I don’t have a ring with me, darling, but—”

“Fuck that, dude. I don’t care.”

Hermann laughed too, struggling to sit up. He was immediately pushed back down with a kiss to his cheek, another to his eyelid. He spluttered slightly, gripping Newton’s arm.

“Maybe I’ll grab up one of those paper clips upstairs when we—”

“I don’t care.”

“—and assuming we aren’t locked up forever when we let Jake go—”

“I literally do not—”

“It’s infuriating that I can _hear_ your thoughts and yet you’re still interrupting everything I—”

“Just tell me you love me, Herms. Just—”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said! Didn't I say? It's called eat, drink, and be MARRIED! (Thank you for reading this, as always <3)


	21. I Got You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newt and Hermann have woken up from their drift to an understandably upset Jake. They might have things figured out but Jake can't really trust them. Can you blame him?

Jake realized two things the moment Newton went under in the drift. First, that both he and Gottlieb there were soundly strapped down, trapped in place, with hardly any means of undoing that. Hermann had been buckled in so he didn’t slip off the gurney and Jake had been straining to pull his hands out from the restraints pretty much the moment Newt hit the button. They were trapped. If and when Newt woke up, well, great. He was in charge. Fuck them.

Two, that Nate and Jules wouldn’t be highly suspicious if they were gone for a few days. They could be gathering evidence here for a while. A reasonable time? With Nate being a worrier? Three days before they thought to go looking for them and in that time, Dr. Mad Scientist Kaiju Fucker over there could do whatever he wanted with them. Ranging from unpleasant to deadly to somehow worse.

Jake bucked harder and cursed at his arms.

“Oh, bloody brilliant. Got locked up by Geezer. You stupid man! You stupid – fuck you, Geezer!”

His wrists were starting to really hurt. Hell, he might even cry, except Jake didn’t cry and, come on, man, focus up. Be diligent. You can think your way out of –

“AAAAGH!”

Jake yanked his shoulder and thumped back against the chair when he heard the distinct crescendo from the connective unit to the PONs. He gripped his fists tight against the armrest, trying not to breathe too loudly so he didn’t tip off whomever was waking up.

_Oh Christ, please be Gottlieb, please be Gottlieb, you weird sonuvabitch, you best not be possessed._

But the groan was coming from the wrong side beside him and Jake closed his eyes, cursing behind his teeth.

“Herms?”

Newt sounded so _tired_. The word slipped out of him, soft and sweet like, which wasn’t even fair for the bastard. He sounded like he’d woken up from a long nap after running a marathon. He didn’t _sound_ possessed. Not like when he was in the PPDC cell, screaming with too many voices. But, then again, he didn’t sound possessed when he was visiting Moyulan Shatterdome and introduced Liwen Shao. So, no way to really tell until they hooked him up to an EEG and read the activity. Saw the familiar spikes of Precursor activity that had been previously marked completely absent. Fuck them for trusting one readout, he supposed.

Jake didn’t look up. Better to keep his eyes closed, not trembling because he wasn’t a fucking coward or nothing, but waiting. He heard Newton rise and come towards him. Not towards him. Past him, over to the gurney, where another set of vocals joined up with the first.

“Bloody _hell_.”

Jake could honestly cry. He wouldn’t. Hell, he could. But he wouldn’t.

“That’s the very last time you dose me with a sedative,” Hermann grumbled as Newton undid the restraints around him. “Where’s J—”

Before Jake could pipe up to answer, he heard a muffled breath and something shifting across something else. Something just a little bit wet. Were those two—

“Oi! I am _right_ here!” Jake yelled, thumping his fists as hard as he could against the armrests. “Nobody gets to make out while I’m strapped down!”

“You strapped him—”

“Look, I was super goddamn freaking out.”

“Newton!”

“Okay! Jesus, okay. Okay.”

Newt appeared next to Jake, smiling apologetically. Jake sat back, waiting for him to release one of his hands so he could scruff him by the neck and drop him to the floor. Nate got to punch him in the face and Jake decided now was officially his turn.

“Hey, buddy,” Newton said, undoing his ankle first, working on the left side of his body first.

“Don’t,” Jake said and set his jaw.

“No, I know. I made a lot of mistakes. Like, a _lot_. And you’re going to be pretty reasonably upset with me. Totally understandable. But, uh—”

The second his arm was free, he grabbed Newt’s throat and slammed him down against the chair before tossing him away. Newt stumbled, gasping, hitting a table with kaiju tissues stacked up, and went down on his knees.

“Newton!”

Jake was already scrabbling to undo the restraint on his opposite wrist. The panic at having won himself a few precious seconds made his fingers numb. He cursed, prying it up just enough and stood before he realized his left ankle was free, but his right one was still locked into place.

“Christ!” he hissed, kicking uselessly and almost wrenching his knee in the wrong direction. He felt someone coming up behind him and raised his fist again, ready to knock Geezer’s lights out.

“Jake, would you _please_ hold still.” Hermann had his hands up, an appeasing gesture as he walked carefully around the chair. Jake kicked his leg uselessly again, hopping on his free foot.

“You don’t call me Jake,” he said, waiting for Hermann to just get a little closer. Just a step. He’d be easy to take down for sure, right? Probably. Get his cane and beat Newt back and then run to the plane, take off…leave them….ugh, no, don’t leave them, this isn’t their fault their possessed, bloody idiots.

Nobody was moving. There was a pause, a stillness, as Jake’s heavy breathing supplied the background noise and Newt shifted, chucking a sealed kaiju lymph node off his chest. Hermann had lowered his hand, so he could lean on his cane. His eyes flickered over to Newt on the ground, his expression soft and worried, before he went back to staring at Jake.

“Officer Pentecost, I—”

“Nah, mate. Jake is easier,” Jake said before he finally sank back down in the chair. It seemed that was motion enough for Hermann to step forward and undo the restraint around his ankle. He watched him, his back, his face, his hands. Seemed just like regular old Gottlieb. No real threatening shift in his demeanor. “You two do alright in your little impromptu drift?”

“Yes,” Hermann answered, unthreading the strap around his ankle and standing up only to dust his hand down his shirt, tugging the bottom twice. “Not ideal, mind you. Newton panicked and—”

“Well I really thought they were still in my head,” Newton said through a groan, righting himself. He rubbed his neck, stretching and making it pop. “Dude, you’re fast. Almost broke my neck.”

“You know I can’t trust neither of you now.”

“No, I don’t suppose you can,” Hermann said, offering something close to a smile. “I do apologize for that.”

“You’re too fucking nice, Gottlieb.”

Jake shook his head, forced himself up, and extended a hand to Newt down on the ground. The short man flinched, of course, and maybe he had every right to flinch, but he’d also pulled some shit and it was hard to muster sympathy, really. Still, he took Jake’s hand and allowed him to help Newt back up to his feet.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Jake pulled Newt in by his elbow, staring down at him. Newt held his breath, gripping Jake’s arm, while his eyes flickered back and forth between Jake’s. He looked genuinely afraid. His pupils dilated and constricted, reacting to the light, to his fear, to everything a human should react to. “You’re getting scanned soon as we’re back.”

“Yes,” Newt answered softly.

“Both of you.”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“I’m cuffing you on the plane,” Jake said and finally let go.

“Cuffing me…wait, what? Why?”

But Jake spun and Newt held up his hands to cover his face. He expected that punch too. Jake was a little sad he didn’t get to deliver it. Not that he was cruel or nothing, but…the man had threatened him essentially at gunpoint and strapped him to a chair. He could excuse a few violent thoughts.

“Both of you,” Jake said.

“Both of us?” they asked in unison.

The pair looked at each other, micro expressions playing out on their face. It was pretty clear they were still caught in the bonds of the Drift Connection, sharing memories, feelings, thoughts. Jake sighed and waved his hand between them, breaking their eye contact.

“Yeah, converse all you want. Just, help us upstairs. I wanna see what the weather’s doing and if we can’t take off soon.”

“We’re heading back now?” asked Newt, inching closer to Hermann. They linked hands and the slight touch appeared to ground them instantly. “What’s gonna—”

“We’re heading back as soon as we can,” Jake reiterated. “Don’t be behind me no more. Go up the stairs. I’m following. You do anything stupid, that’s it. I’m done with you.”

Another blip between them, one that made Hermann scowl and shake his head and Newton laugh. He patted Hermann’s hand.

“Okay, well, you promised.”

“Don’t be unreasonable, Newton.”

Jake just sighed. He wanted this to be okay. He wanted this to be done. He wanted this to fold itself up and tuck away into his past and be back where there was sunlight and warmth and two people who needed their cheeks kissed. Face or otherwise. Dealer’s choice.

“Up the stairs, you two. Now,” he said and waved his arms to get them moving. They had the location of the lab. Let a team come back and clear it out. He was done. He clapped his hands and briefly looked down at his wrists, dark lines where the straps had been rubbing him raw. Yep. Decidedly done. Decidedly ignoring the little back and forth in front of him while Newton tried to scoop up Hermann at the foot of the stairs.

“Well don’t _push_ me, _liebling_ , I can very well—”

“I’m carrying you, dude. Practice.”

“Carry…no. That’s a silly tradition we don’t ever need to participate—”

“Oh, I’m fucking carrying you over the threshold. You’re not the only romantic.”

“You’ll drop me!”

“I won’t drop you. Look at these arms!” Hermann gave an appreciative squeeze of Newton’s bicep, grinning like a schoolboy before he could settle his features to his classic scowl and looped his arm around Newton’s shoulders. Their temples touched as they started up the stairs together, moving as a unit. “Oh, yeah, no. That too.”

“No.”

“You were thinking it!”

“Yes, but shut _up_ , Newton.”

“You were—”

Jake let out a long, _long_ -winded sigh. Because, despite disasters and kaiju clones and freak outs and bad, bad, _bad_ coping mechanisms, there was a silly little reminder that those two idiots were in love. Bastards.

\---

“We’ll have to make a stop at Attu Station, and then it’s roughly 30 hours back to Sydney,” Jake said, clapping his hands as he stood up. Hermann recognized the dismissive gesture. “So. Get comfy, lads, cause this is gonna take forever.”

“30 hours? 30…did we seriously fly for 30 hours?” Newt twisted in his seat, his hands pinned together as he searched out for Hermann’s hands.

“You slept through most of it,” Hermann remarked gently, shifting so he could clasp Newton’s hands between his own.

It was likely one or both of them would know how to get out of the handcuffs, doubly so because they could reach each other, but it made Jake feel better that they were currently manacled until he could lock himself in the cabin. They were lucky—and it was a sad thought to think this, of course, but true nonetheless—that the Precursor-infected Newton had had the forthright to keep handcuffs in the lab. Likely to restrain whomever he was bringing in to hook up to his ridiculously named Kaiju brain. Newton shied away from the memories same as he did before. They had plenty of answers already. He didn’t want to have to relive them. Save it for when they were back where they could seek out proper therapy.

Hermann looked up at him then, even as he rubbed his thumb across Newton’s knuckles. He was patient enough to wait until they were in the air to free himself and Newton next so they weren’t terribly uncomfortable for the flight.

“You’re sure you’re up for that? We could hold off travel for another day. Get some rest. Perhaps—”

Jake held up his hand and said, “I’m gonna stop you right there, Doc. Cause it _sounds_ like you wanna stay at the lab and we’re not doing that. I’m not doing that. I still can’t trust neither of ya, so. We’re going. Just gotta make it to the Attu Station first and then we’ll figure out from there. And I’ve radioed back to Sydney, so they’re expecting us.”

He only added that last bit to remind them not to try anything funny, like breaking out and murdering him. For a laugh, of course. The poor man was trying his best, given his circumstances. Hermann only heard about what Newton had done to him, the fool, but he could understand his apprehension.

“Of course,” Hermann said, sitting back again. “If you’re alright with it, so are we.”

“Are we?” Newton whispered, with that little buzz drifting over that said _a 30-hour flight is a long goddamn time. I don’t think I can handle 30 hours. Oh, Christ, my heart’s going to explode._

_It won’t. I’m here. I’ll keep you occupied._

_Occupied?_

_Newton. Eyebrow_ down _, before I force it down._

_I could force down a few things. Eyebrows. Hands. Other appendages._

_Yes, be quiet._

_You can’t shut me up in your head too! That’s not fair! Shut me up with your c—_

Hermann closed his eyes, releasing a short, captive sigh as his jaw worked left to right. He squeezed Newton’s hand a little tighter and forced his eyes open to meet Jake’s, who looked long-suffering. A fairly common expression to be had for them during nearly all of his career at the PPDC, even though Hermann often assumed the look was aimed solely at Newton.

“I’m heading up there,” Jake said after a time. “You tamper with anything? I’ll fly us into the ocean. I don’t care. Try and be on your best behavior till we’re back in Sydney, yeah?”

“Yes, fine,” Hermann said, trying to abate the rosy flush of his cheeks. He didn’t look directly at Newton because the man was nearly a furnace with a confusing mix of emotions boiling through him. “We won’t try and murder you, Pentecost.”

“Great. He’s back on Pentecost. I get ‘Jake’ in the heat of the moment, but, no, now I—”

Jake’s voice whittled away as he walked up to the front of the plane and started the procedure to get them airborne again. Hermann watched him, leaning over in the aisle as the cabin door swung open and shut after him. There could very well have been the sound of the locking mechanism, or he imagined it, but that was fine either way. Hermann turned to Newton, slipping his handcuffed hands up and over to the back of his head before he crashed their mouths together.

There was delighted surprise, of course, vibrating back and forth between them. Newton did not have a chance to raise his arms and put them around Hermann, so they were crushed between them as Hermann dug into Newton’s mouth. He thinks he doesn’t mind. He thinks he could go for a little more, his knee pushing back the armrest that separated them and all but climbing into Newton’s lap. It was not that he wanted sex. Not that he was averse to it either, just. Not as simple as that. He was pleased that Newton’s mind was already buzzing with the possibilities. Hermann, however, needed the closeness. He needed the inches that separated them to disappear, skin to touch skin, pressing the length of himself against Newton and slip into his memories again easier than bathwater. He wasn’t even sure he breathed.

He breathed.

Newton breathed.

He kissed.

Newton kissed.

He felt a little internal battle slip across from Newton, a worry and a wonder before his hands settled and he tucked his fingers into Hermann’s belt loops. Their minds focused on the insipid paperclip around Newton’s left ring finger and how easy it would be to unbend it and open the handcuffs.

 _I won’t_ , Newton thought.

 _I don’t mind if you do_.

_No way, dude. That’s my fucking engagement ring right there._

Hermann smiled against Newton’s lips, cradling his scalp as the jolt of the plane reminded them they would be taking off and he should buckle his seat belt at least.

 _I got you_.

_I know you do, darling._

And he did, of course. He pushed Hermann’s hips into the seat and fumbled to find the seatbelt without breaking away from his mouth. Nipping at his earlobe, his neck. Breathing a shuddering sigh that caught off in a high-pitched squeak when the plane started to take off. Hermann grabbed a fistful of Newton’s hair, bringing him back from his unease, his trepidation for flying.

 _I’ve got you_ , Hermann thought reverently.

_I know you do._

Newton’s stomach flipped, but he was easily distracted by slender fingers through his hair, down his back, the short click and release before Hermann shrugged off his hand cuffs and pushed up the bottom of Newton’s shirt so he could put flat palms on his stomach and hips. What was there to hide anymore anyways? Hermann knew him. He knew him and he loved him. And that was enough.

\---

It’s damn hard to sleep without a copilot. Every little jump and bump knocked Jake awake like he was close to drowning. And while that was all fine and well going _in_ to Russia, coming back without any sleep or comfort the night before had basically wrecked him. He felt shivery and sick after he guided the jet down onto the tarmac, his eyes stinging when he saw the familiar naval base. Not home, but where was home anyways? In a time like this? Honestly. Still. He was close, and he felt the pull as soon as the engines ticked down.

Jake unclicked his seatbelt, grabbed the pistol he’d kept in the cabin—idiot, should’ve brought it along in the lab but _nooooo_ , we thought the scientists were a couple of harmless knobs. Teach ya something next time, Pentecost. Seriously—and unlocked the cabin door. Oh, he could rack out for days if anybody would let him. Maybe.

Well, be prepared for an attack, that’s what.

Not that he was expecting anything, really, if he _really_ thought about it.

Jake stepped out of the captain’s cabin to check up on Geezer and Gottlieb. He wasn’t even particularly surprised to see the handcuffs removed and folded up on the seat beside them. Jake grabbed them anyways, ready to put them back on, but he paused to admire them wrapped up around each other. Newton was dozing on Hermann’s chest, his hair ruffled, his shirt pushed up to show a surprising number of tattoos that circled front to back. Jesus, the guy was into ink, huh? Hermann was also fast asleep. Seemed the landing didn’t shake them awake. He was glad to see no clothes were really removed, but who’s to say what had happened during the long flight. They looked peaceful, actually. Their hands were entwined, and Jake clocked the makeshift paperclip rings. Well ain’t that just cute.

“’Ey,” he said, knocking his foot against the seat to make a thumping noise. “Rise and shine.”

Hermann woke first, startled, wrapping his arm protectively around Newton. He blinked to take in his surroundings and finally up to Jake, who was dangling the handcuffs.

“Ah, yes,” he said slowly, stretching an arm up. “Do we really need those?”

“We really need them,” Jake answered. “Even if you _can_ pop them off. Just long enough to get the EEG readings and all. I’ll vouch for ya after the fact.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Hermann said, raising his arm as Newton woke up.

“Nah, I want to. But I’m still pissed, so, get the tests done. Then we’ll talk. Fair?”

“Where are we?” Newton asked, smashing palms into his eyes.

“Fair.” Hermann answered Jake instead, rubbing Newton’s back. “More than fair.”

“Oh, man. Do we have to do the handcuff routine again?”

“’Fraid so, _liebling_.”

Jake just rolled his eyes. It almost made him sick. Almost. He could keep a hold on his emotions and all that annoying shit ‘till he was back with Lambert and Reyes and then he was flopping down in the middle of the bed. Damn their protests, honestly. He’d paid his penance. They could shove it.

“Yeah, c’mon, lovebirds. Up.” Jake helped Hermann up and handcuffed him hands in front, Newton following. He should do hands in the back, but it was easier for Hermann to use his cane and he didn’t think they were really a risk. Not really. He hoped, anyways. He led them towards the exit before saying, “Invite me to the wedding, lads, or I’ll be pissed.”

“Who said we’re even _having_ a wedding?” Newt asked, a bit indignant.

“Well, I think my siblings would enjoy it. Same as your uncle.”

“You don’t even _want_ a ceremony, Herms,” Newt said, but Jake could see them smiling at each other. Disgusting. Just—

“Welcome back,” came the familiar voice on the tarmac and Jake thought his heart melted like acid in his veins as he turned around and nearly raced down the steps, barreling into a very confused Nate waiting for him down at the bottom. “Whoa, easy there, Pentecost. Jesus.”

“Shut it,” Jake said, dropping his head onto Nate’s chest. “I’m spent, mate. Fucking spent. Tell Jules to let me back into the cabin.”

Nate had a response ready. A little comeback, but he put his hand on Jake’s shoulder and patted it before rubbing a circle into his skin.

“Yeah. Kinda weird not having you,” he said quietly. He looked up and Jake could imagine him squinting. He didn’t care to look. Nate smelled like Irish Spring engine oil and cigarettes. Poor bastard had probably just gotten away from retooling an engine or something. Something to keep his hands occupied. He’d been worried. Made Jake feel a little lovesick at the thought, actually. Jake let himself live there in the familiar smells even when he heard the confusing question of, “Are they in handcuffs?”

“Yeah.” Jake cupped Nate’s neck before he pushed away to go check on them. “It’s been weird.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell you how pleased I am at the thought of Hermann being able to undo handcuffs. Just a lot.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with this, folks! You're all amazing!


	22. Yes! No, Oh God, No

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short moment between Nate, who has a lot on his mind, and Jake, who's only thing on his mind is getting sleep. And then it's back off to Newt and Hermann who have to go through some tests, prove they're not infected, and figure out their lives from there.

True to word, Jake went to the unofficial joint cabin that they’d been bunking in and flopped out on the bed. Not that it was a particularly big bed. Jake had lucked out as a fairly high-ranking officer—new positions did have there perks—to get them something with a queen. Still, the space was often made smaller when two more people joined, but they made it work. That was the whole justification of it, wasn’t it? They made it work. Right now, Nate let Jake flop down in the very center, his face smashed down between two pillows. Jules was aware Jake was back and promised to come see him when she was done with her shift. Which was fine. He looked dead on his feet when he first arrived, so he wasn’t going to do much in way of conversation.

“Did you want help – and he’s out. Great.”

Nate stood at the foot of the bed, hands on his hips, just sorta staring at him. That happened. Way more than was necessary, actually, and he’d roll his eyes and clench his jaw and say “I’m _not_ staring” to anybody that caught him.

But he was.

Mostly as a focal point, actually. Honestly. Nate ticked away everything he had on his mental itinerary. Drs. Geiszler and Gottlieb had been taken into medical to run a full gamut of tests—that little stunt Dr. Geiszler had pulled was really uncalled for and now they had to reprove his innocence, which was already a goddamn headache. Adding onto it the fact that Hermann also had to be proved innocent. Christ. He should have tagged along to Russia, but they’d let their guard slip. It was so hard picking up the pieces and following the programs that were still in production and basically fixing the PPDC while they scrambled to get some semblance of a pecking order back into place. Not to mention waiting to see results on Project Blue. And it was so easy to get caught up in Officer Reyes wake or Officer Pentecost’s flippant charm and just…it could have been worse. Nate knew that.

Never again.

Honestly.

Never again.

Right, so, Drs. Geiszler and Gottlieb are doing their tests. Dr. Sambre had been called in. The woman was nice and professional and had offered council numerous times to Nate, who declined politely. She’d be in tomorrow morning to help verify the data. And then, of course, there was the board meeting to go over the operations trying to crack how to get into the Anteverse. Bring the game to their home turf. At the time, that felt like it was their best option on the table. Nate knew it was bad. Knew it enough that he didn’t even discuss it with Jules and Jake. Not until it was finalized. The discovery of the kaiju-hybrid had been met with a quick panic and an even quicker recovery. It didn’t leave command that there even _was_ a goddamn kaiju-hybrid, and the only people that knew about it were the council, Nate’s team, and the people on the boat.

Nate’s team. Jesus. He could feel Jules threatening to kick his ass at the thought.

There were some other options bantered about for a while. Ones that didn’t involve forcibly opening another Breach and entering hostile and, by all accounts from researching Raleigh Becket, absolutely radioactive environment that would kill any human without the proper protection—so, don’t bring humans. There was a reason they were courting Liwen Shao. Still, a few on the council were suggesting live and let live; ignore the threats of the Precursors a la Newt promising that they would come back. _We_ had opened it from this side, not _they_ opening it from there’s.

Other’s said set up sentries and monitor activity and prepare for them to return. A few suggested they cut and run, exploring space travel and colonies, but that was too much time and they had a specimen alive, _now_ , and they were prepared to use that. Were they prepared to use that?

And, beyond that, there was always the work for Project Blue. Which, Jake, if he could just get his head out of his ass, would understand the need for _discretion_. Of course he was thrilled, he probably had the biggest stake in it, but, still. Luckily, he’d managed to keep that mouth of his shut about it to Geiszler and Gottlieb. Lord knows what they’d do if they found out. Neither here nor there, but even hinting to the cadets got him on Jules’ shit list. Nate was only mad at him because he stole all his tank tops and shaving cream. He picked smaller battles with Jake. He liked seeing him riled up and fighting for affection. He liked….

Well.

Christ, focus.

Everything seemed terrible. The fight to get to the Anteverse. That kaiju-hybrid in the facility. The board meetings. The struggle. The whole goddamn human race, actually. It all seemed terrible. Nate didn’t voice this, barely even to himself, but it seemed.

Anyways.

After the board meeting, there was a second hearing to decide what to do with Drs. Geiszler and Gottlieb. Nate was going to fight for them. He swore he would. Even if he was a little irritated—upset…no, furious…no terrified—about what they had almost done to Jake, he knew there were extenuating circumstances. That, and they needed both of them. They were _the_ k-science team. Having Newt back would be invaluable in speeding up the operation to get into the Anteverse. But, a part of him knew that that was disaster waiting to happen. It was putting an addict in a den with his vice and waiting for him to kill himself. Except this time, that also meant ending the world. Jules kept reminding him that a pardon and putting them out to pasture was probably for the best. Jules didn’t know that they were keeping San. Christ, he was going to have to tell her. And Jake. Maybe he wouldn’t have to tell Geiszler and Gottlieb. Well, no, he’d have to, because he needed their help. They were going to head the project, if he got his way. Wy was that a good decision? If had more time to think. But, the best strategy was knowing the enemy. How they think. What they planned. Who best knew the enemy than the man who was piloted by them for ten years, oh God, just imagine trying to tell him. Trying to tell Gottlieb! So, that was going to be fun.

And, besides, the two were apparently engaged? Was he going to have to put a wedding on his schedule?

No, fuck that.

Well, maybe.

Nate sighed, picking that exact moment to breathe out his frustrations in time with Jake shifting on the bed and breathing out in his sleep. Nate clenched his fingers on his hips, leaving white indents as he tried to shake himself out of this. Break the Drift bond. He was really good at protecting himself right up until they were hooked up to the Jaegers and, even then, it was banter and battle. That was something to compartmentalize his thoughts. Regimented. Focused. Purposeful.

Jake flinched, curling up, and Nate could feel the peripheral fingers of a nightmare knocking on his brain. He checked his watch. Medical would keep Hermann and Newt busy for a couple of hours and the board meeting wasn’t until later today and there were a dozen other things he needed to get done before then, but he softened his stance, worked Jake’s boots off, and slid up onto the bed with him. Jake found his spot wrapped around Nate’s torso almost instantly. Warm. Heavy. Perfect.

Ten minutes. Ten minutes, and then Nate would get up and go double check with Vandar about the requisition logs and then reconnect with Kipley at the Icebox rebuild and then it was a call with the Hong Kong center before the first board meeting and….

Jake moved again. Tiny sleepy gestures as he got himself comfortable. Well, fine. Maybe they both needed this. Ten minutes, though. Nate pushed the pad of his finger across the stripe shaved across Jake’s temple. Jake would be redoing that soon; keeping up his “look.” How did he find the time, honestly? Well, whatever. It was important to him. Little things were important. Nate didn’t smile, but he bent over and let his mouth rest on Jake’s scalp, waiting out the short time they had together. He could give him ten minutes. Or at least until he stopped having bad dreams.

\---

“Herms?”

“Be _quiet_.”

The monitor blipped all of three times before there was another, “Psst. Herms?”

Hermann closed his eyes, trying to ignore the entire cap of electrodes currently glued down to his scalp. _If you ruin this test and we have to start over like we did with the MRIs, I’m beating you to within an inch of your life._

 _Oh, thank God,_ Newt replied, his thoughts buzzing over the ghost Drift bond that tethered them. _It was starting to fade and I couldn’t hear you anymore_.

 _Perhaps you couldn’t hear me because you’ve been singing songs from_ Hair _in your head, with a worrying repeat of the refrain “Why don’t my mother love me.” Which I feel we should discuss but can’t it wait until_ after _we’ve finished with this?_

_Yeah, but they put this goop in my hair!_

_Yes. Mine as well. Yes, and the scrub beforehand. I was_ right _here, Newton._

 _And that part of the song is catchy. It digs in, man._ Hallelujah I adore it. Hallelujah—

“We’re almost done,” one of the techs said, interrupting the easy flow of their thoughts. It was a jolt that reminded them that other people were in the room, that they were not alone, floating in nothing with their thoughts to keep them company. Each other’s thoughts, more accurately, as they flowed with some effort between them. Hermann understood the necessity of the tests. He understood why there were guards posted outside the door and restraints ready for them and that this was all absolutely Newton’s fault, but he could appreciate one tiny thing. That it had cemented their bond again. That he could feel Newton in there with him and he loved him.

 _Aw. I love you too, Herms_.

 _Yes, I know_.

He could feel the man sticking his tongue out at him, even across the room, and very much wanted to reach over and gently swat him. He wanted to reach over, period. Take his hand or something. It was unspeakably cruel that this last test was done on cots far enough away form each other that they couldn’t even do that. Being in the MRI had been hell enough. Now they could actually see each other and he just wanted to fit his hand in around Newton’s. That would be enough.

The lights stopped flickering, warming up to a steady white. Hermann blinked and sat up, rubbing his eyes. He had to ask, “Are we done?”

“You’re done,” the tech answered.

They were over to Hermann first, undoing the strap below his chin before he got to it, and then removing the electrode cap. He was offered a few wet-wipes for his hair and recommended a shower before they went over to Newton.

Hermann didn’t even bother cleaning off the gel in his hair. He grabbed up his cane, hopped out of the chair, and followed the tech straight on over to Newton. The second gentleman reached out to brace Hermann, but was circumvented easily. He shared a quick glance with his partner before he was told to go check in with another doctor about the previous test. He left without saying anything. Good riddance. Hermann ignored him, ignored both of them, and was the one flipping up the strap bolted down across Newton’s wrist. A ridiculous safety measure only deemed appropriate for him and oh how Hermann had railed and fought with them to no use. Now that the test was done, he saw no need to keep it in place. Newton agreed. His hand flew up and took a hold of Hermann’s arm and the nervous energy, that lightning strike in their limbs, the one just simmering beneath their skin dissipated immediately.

_It’s not electricity, Herms. But if you’re frequently feeling an electrical buzzing down your spine, did anybody talk to you about Lhermitte’s phenomenon? We could—_

_It is an expression and you_ know _it is an expression._

Newton squeezed Hermann’s fingers as the tech removed his cap. _I love you._

Hermann squeezed his hand back.

“Alright, gentlemen. I don’t want to give you false hope, but I can tell you that the readings look good. Of course, we’re going to review them and talk to, who was it again?” the tech asked as he looked down at his clipboard.

“Dr. Sambre,” the two answered in unison.

“Right. Right, she’s flying in. Well, perfect. Uh, I don’t know…what we’re supposed to do with you…. I know Officer Lambert was supposed to come down and collect you after this was done. He’s been so busy lately.”

Newton raised his free hand to make a lewd gesture before Hermann grabbed it and forced his hand back down to his lap.

“I’m sure he has been,” Hermann said quickly, ignoring a weak protest from Newton. “Is there any objection to us going back to a cabin and getting some rest?”

“Ah. As far as I know…no?” The tech winced, looking down at their clipboard again. “I mean, maybe. You two are under surveillance and, you know, with the threat of, the, uh, the Precursor involvement—”

“Which was ruled out,” Hermann said stiffly.

“Well, not entirely.” The tech raised a hand. “I mean, yes. It looks clear. You’re right. I just mean, until we have, you know, official, certified evidence that has been properly reviewed, I’m not allowed to clear you. I want to. Seriously, but it’s above my paygrade. Sorry, guys. Look, it’s not very busy in here. You can just stay, and we’ll wait for Officer Lambert to come collect you.”

The tech apologized with a smile and a little wave of their hand, exiting from the room before Hermann could begin to argue. So, instead, he sighed and sat down on the armrest of Newton’s chair, slipping his arm around Newton’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Newton said softly against Hermann’s ribcage. Hermann shifted to look down at him, at the back of his head. Newton didn’t look up. It was easier to rest his head there instead. “I know this is my fault.”

“Well, you threatened to shoot Jake.”

“I threatened to tranquilize him,” Newton corrected, sighed, and settled again. “But point taken.”

“That was very brash of you, _liebling_. Very unwise.”

“It was unwise to go there in the first place,” Newton said, echoing the thought that Hermann had had about the experience. “I know. Herms, I wanted to know. I wanted to know, and I don’t anymore. I’m so….”

“Tired,” Hermann finished and let himself sink into Newton’s lap before his spine started to protest. There was not enough contact. They needed more. He slipped his hand under Newton’s shirt collar, rubbing his palm across his chest. “It was a bit of a shock to see all of that. I can imagine it was easier not knowing.”

“No,” Newton said softly, not fighting the touch across the self-inflicted brand on his skin. His eyes fluttered shut and he relaxed as Hermann blindly traced the word. “It is easier. But I needed to. I’d drive myself mad if I didn’t.”

“Will you drive yourself mad now?” Hermann asked, and it meant to be teasing, but he could feel that worry bubbling up across the Drift bond. “You’re alright. You’re here. You’ve got me.”

“I’ve got you,” Newton repeated. He put a hand over Hermann’s on his chest, wincing when he felt Hermann’s palm go flat across the letters of his name. “I love you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Hermann answered with a kiss to his forehead. “You cut my name into yourself during a highly stressed and disassociated state while fighting an alien hive mind. I don’t condone the action, darling, but I think I understand the intent.”

“You gonna get my name tattooed on you next?” Newt asked with the sound of a smile, even if it didn’t quite translate onto his face.

“Oh, I think we’ll save that one for an anniversary or something.” He started to move his thumb across the scars, the simple reminder. In time, perhaps, they would fade. There were a few options they could employ to help, even if it would muck up the tattoos across his chest. Another item to fix. To replace. To reclaim. He was a tapestry of dreams and wishes and faults and failures.

“You’re such a fucking poet, Herms.”

“Don’t insult me.”

“Alright.”

“Wait,” Hermann said and tipped Newton’s face up to catch the corner of his mouth with a kiss. “Insult me a little or I’ll worry you’ve grown bored and think you don’t love me anymore.”

“I do,” Newton said. _Tell me you do too_.

“I do,” Hermann answered. He smiled against Newton’s cheek. That sounded very much like finishing up some vows. He’d be very pleased to do so again, in the right setting. He glanced down and caught Newton’s left hand right as he picked it up to touch Hermann’s face. Instead, Hermann turned it over and kissed his knuckles, lingering on the little wobbly ring of wire. “I’ll get you a real ring when this is over.”

“You keep saying that like I care.”

“I know you don’t. But it brings me some endless joy getting to see it on your hand. I’d feel much better if it were more permanent.”

“Tattoo it?”

“Call me old fashioned.”

“I always do,” Newton interjected.

“But I’d like it to be a silver band, _thank you_.”

“Romantic,” Newton shot back, tipping his voice so it sounded like a playful insult. The way it should. “Tell me you love me, dude.”

Hermann smiled, brushing back Newton’s hair. “I do,” he said again, and smiled at the push across the bond. Newton did not make a sound, but there was a whimper all the same. Hermann knew how he felt. He knew Newton knew how he felt. He did, absolutely, but sometimes Newton needed to hear it plainly. “I love you, Newt.”

Newton’s eyes were still closed. He was breathing softer now. Easier. He smiled at the nickname, a hand slipping from his chest up to gently grasp Hermann’s arm. Hermann rested his lips on Newton’s brow. He was trying to sap away the last tremors of fear for the now and the future and the what-could-be.

“Don’t leave,” Newton muttered sleepily.

“I wouldn’t dare,” Hermann answered.

\---

Sleeping is.

Sleeping is easier.

Sleeping wasn’t the easiest thing for years, but it _was_ easier. It was easier because Hermann was there. Not, like, okay, not _imagined_ Hermann. Not _replacement_ Hermann. And that’s all it was, in the end. A figment propped up in the corner to justify the tremulous link from the Drift bond left over like a few threads of string in the corner of the mind. It was a coping mechanism _at best_ , but it was so much better having the real deal.

You are going to apologize. To a lot of people. Probably for, like, all time, too. Start with Jake, because he’s close and he deserves a goddamn apology, seriously. And then Nate and Jules, too, because they put up with them. Write to Tendo, because you miss him and you want him to come to the wedding and then break down on him about Mako.

Mako.

Ah. Fuck.

It’s going to be an awesome wedding, though. Like, there was no thought or plan behind it at all, but, now that you know Hermann actually wants a ceremony? To you of all people? Fucking _yes_ you are going to pull out all the stops.

To Hermann.

For Hermann.

No, to Hermann.

Mmm, for Hermann.

Oh, god, apologize to Hermann, because you put him through hell. Are you worth it? You wonder that yourself. Are you worth this? No, probably not, but you’re just about asleep and that’s something to scratch at later. You’re so tired. Just always, you’re so tired, and you can’t sleep, except now you’re allowed to, and you want to, and you can, because Hermann is there. He’s, like, he’s given permission. Why? For you of all people? Why? What worth do you offer? What’s worth really mean, anyways? What’s anything?

Not the time to dive head-first into the cement block that is an existential crisis. Let sleeping demons lie. Christ, maybe Hermann’s poeticism has worn off. Or you wore off on him? Or you’re both just sort’ve poetic and pathetic in your old age.

Fuck that noise.

You can feel the kiss on your temple and the hand on your chest and the body wrapping easily around you in the small chair in a dark room in the world, in this world, now, here, real, and god _damnit_ everything feels amazing. Just a little bit. There’s a bite in there to all the things that aren’t amazing, but, again, not thinking about it. Sleeping.

Sleeping is so much easier than that.

_Schlaf einfach, mein Schatz._

Oh, good. Right. He’s in here too.

_Thanks, Herms._

\---

Hermann had pushed Newton up into his lap as he slept, which was far easier on his hip than it might have looked. Sitting at an angle was doing him no favors. He rubbed Newton’s back, humming softly to himself some odd little tune he had picked up somewhere, likely over from Newton. He’d laugh if he recognized it as an 80s pop ballad, but it was something to do while they waited. While Newton slept. That seemed important, most of all.

And, while waiting, he ran through his arguments about getting San euthanized, removing themselves from the PPDC, and escaping somewhere to the country. A country. Another country not here. If Raleigh could do it, if Hercules Hansen and Tendo Choi and all those before them could do it, so could they. Not that either of them would fair well without the stimulus of the pursuit of knowledge, but that was what becoming attending professors at some college was for. He decided that was the life he needed for them, after they were married. And they would be married. He was bloody certain about that.

He was hoping it would be Officer Lambert walking through the door then, come to collect them and tell them off for threatening Jake, but at least removing them from medical. Hermann couldn’t tell if it was worse that it was Officer Reyes at the door, her arms crossed, her face turned down in a scowl.

Oh, no, definitely worse. Hell hath no fury and all that. Hermann sat up, his arm protectively wrapped around Newton.

“Officer—”

“I’ll kill him,” Jules said, the words spit out in a manner that suggested she had hoped Hermann couldn’t hear her. He feared, for a moment at least, that she had meant she would attack Newton, but she looked distracted then, focused on something internal, and uncrossed her arms to come into the room properly. “Gottlieb? You will not believe the bullshit I heard.”

“What about?” he asked, keeping his voice soft, hoping she would do them the courtesy of returning the gesture so Newton didn’t wake up.

“They’re keeping it. Lied to me, when I’ve been busting my ass with the cadets, trying to keep J-tech…. They’re keeping it and they’re trying to replicate it,” she said, eyes flicking down to Newton, a short twitch in her face before she settled firmly on Hermann.

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure I—”

“San. They’re going to use San.”

“What?” his voice pitched up, and Newton stirred. He apologized across the Drift, snapping back to hide his growing panic. “For what? How? When? _Why_?”

“And Nate knew. That sonovabitch. Lied to my face like—”

“Reyes,” said Hermann, his voice cutting in. “Apologies, but…what’s happening?”

“Mm. Yeah. You two aren’t cleared anymore. Got you both on lockdown. So much for credentials.” Reyes tapped index fingers to her lips, clearly going on with her internal monologue without him. She looked up at last. “Look, it’s preliminary, but the council approved the go-ahead to study Breach tech to figure out how to get us over into the Anteverse. I mean, just with radiation alone, we’ve got a lot of—”

“I thought the whole _plan_ was to destroy San to prevent precisely that.”

“Oh, well, sure,” Jules said with a snappish bite in her tone. “That would make sense. Protect the world from the Breach tears that that _thing_ can—”

Newton tucked his face up into Hermann’s neck to escape the noise, moaning softly as he came to. _What’s....Herms?_

Hermann pet down his hair again, kissing above the shell of his ear. “I’m terribly sorry, Newton, my dear. We’ve just been discussing your…pet project.”

“Pet?” he muttered, his voice soft even when he croaked. He turned and looked at Jules through sleep-squinty eyes. “What’s going on?”

“They intend to keep San,” Hermann said, wincing when he felt the jubilant _yes!_ across the bond, followed by a sharp stab of guilt and recoil and a heavy _no, oh god, no. Why? Why?_ “Beyond that, I don’t know.”

“Oh, I do,” Jules said with a smile cut through with an undercurrent of seething rage. “They want you two back in K-Science to help them clone the kaiju parts necessary to send remote-piloted Jaegers over.”

Newt closed his eyes. “That…is literally what got me in trouble last time. That almost ended the world. That’s a terrible idea. That’s a terrible idea!”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Hermann reiterated sourly.

“Yeah.” Jules nodded. “I know. You boys wanna come help me kick Nate’s ass?”

“Will that do anything?” Hermann asked, trying to soothe Newt, who had started to groan a discordant note of displeasure.

“I dunno. But it’ll make me feel better,” Jules said and offered a hand to help them up to their feet.


	23. It's Newt. It's San. Fuck You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trio confronts Nate about what they plan to do with San. Nobody is really happy.

It was not clear whether the benefit was for Nate Lambert, for them, or for any poor bastard who came across them, but Jules spotted Lambert in the hallway just outside the cabins. He was walking away from them, back straight, shoulders pinned painfully to complete the look, and a million-yard stare stapled to his face. Hermann could only guess who’s benefit this display of calm and strength was for. The man was all alone, save for the encroaching trio.

“Nate!” she snapped, leading the march. He paused, not faltering in step, his smile something accidental right before he caught sight of her and it slipped off his face. “What in the _hell_ do you think—”

“Reyes,” Nate snapped back, somehow making himself stand straighter, taller. “Lower your voice.”

“I’ll _lower_ my voice? I’ll _lower my_ —” She marched up, her fist clenched at her side and ready to spring. “I heard about San. Are you insane? Are _they_ insane? Because it’s insane!”

“Jules! Lower your _voice_!” Nate shouted above her, grabbing her arm and pushing her towards the wall.

“Whoa, whoa! Dude, that’s…okay, easy.” Newton cleaved himself to Hermann’s side instantly, bracing him in the event that things went from strained to disastrous and, in his rising anxious state, he decided to bolt. “We just…wanna talk.”

“Indeed,” Hermann said, leaning into Newton at his side. _He doesn’t look well._

_Yeah, say that again, man._

If they had approached this with any level-headedness—which, Hermann understood nobody seemed to have any to spare, but it was still a thought—they might notice that Nate looked bruised in all forms but the absolute literal sense. He was close to collapse. His pallor was sallow and damp with a shine of sweat, like he was facing the flu and losing. Jules blinked, shocked by the force of his retort, and went still under his hand.

“I figured you, of all people, would understand discretion,” Nate said, keeping his voice even as he stared down at her. “Just by the way you wrung Jake’s neck. So, I suggest you utilize it and shut. Your. Mouth.”

“Nate, what the f—”

“Jules. Goddamnit.” Jake grip softened, and he closed his eyes. It looked very much like it hurt to do so. “Not right now.”

“Yes, right now,” she said, touching his arm before he turned away from her.

_Is this awkward? I think this is awkward. This feels, like, really awkward._

_You’re alright,_ liebling _. It’s not our place._

_Sorta kinda is, Herms. Like, when it deals with our livelihood and all._

“Officer Lambert?” Hermann called, stepping forward. The two turned in sync, there uncomfortable stare pinned to Hermann. “I understand we don’t want to go blathering about to the entire PPDC about the ‘small’ discovery made out in the ocean, but.”

“Smooth,” Newton said into Hermann’s shoulder.

“Shut it,” Hermann quipped back. “Perhaps there is somewhere we _can_ discuss our current predicament?” He paused, leaning on his cane. “Where wandering eyes and ears can’t reach? Yes?”

Nate’s resolve waffled. Poor bloody bastard could be knocked over with a stiff breeze if he wasn’t so stubborn. He cleared his throat, putting his hands on his hips while studying the floor. When he pivoted, Hermann almost missed his quiet, “Follow me.”

They were already well on their way to the general cabins, but Nate carried them through until they found something barely bigger than a storage closet. Jules asked about the cabin, got the answer that Jake was still sleeping, and they weren’t going to bother him. Still sleeping? Hermann thought about it a moment, assessing himself and Newton at his side. They’d slept moderately on the plane but being in a bed would be wonderful. Even some rubbish little army cot. He felt Newton’s hand squeeze his own in agreement.

“So?” Jules asked, breaking Hermann's train of thought. “What the _hell_ is going on, Nate?”

“We _just_ had the meeting,” Nate answered, pointing to the door. “How’d you hear about their verdict anyways?”

“You never really understood how fast gossip trades around here.”

“I’m serious.”

Jules looked like she was debating whether to retort with fire or water; poke Lambert with a useless argument or soothe him and his ego. Hermann was needlessly proud that she had chosen neither.

“Why do they want to keep it?” she asked, mirroring Nate by putting her hands on her hips and squaring her shoulders off in front of the door. She may be roughly the same height as Newton, but she looked ready to take down all of them if it was so required. “I thought we were going to take any research from Russia and use that with what we got from the religious cell over in Shanghai. I thought we _agreed_ that the hybrid was dangerous.”

“It is,” Nate said.

“Also named San,” Newton muttered, like he was offended. Hermann pressed the Drift bond and realized he _was_ offended. “Just saying. Murder monster mistake there has a name. So.”

“Wrong argument, darling,” said Hermann.

“Well, I’m just saying. I mean, look, I kinda made it. And I’m not saying what you think I’m saying, but I still hold the rights to name it.”

“Either _way_ ,” Jules said, stepping in. “I know you know why the council moved to keep San alive. Please don’t tell me they’re doing experiments?”

“God damnit,” Nate said, breathing out a heavy rush of air towards the ground. “Of course they are, okay? Why else would we…know your enemy, Jules. And, beyond that, we know the Precursors have our number. Right? They want us wiped _out_. Newt, you know this.”

“I don’t know shit, dude,” Newton said defensively, clinging just a little tighter to Hermann’s side. “When you were playing telephone with them in the PPDC, I wasn’t there.”

“They said they were coming for us. And evidenced by you creating something that can utilize the Breach, they’re still trying to get here.”

“Maybe,” Newton answered.

“Not maybe. True. Face it. They want us gone. They are coming. And, damnit, we’ve been close. The Kaiju Fanatics are _trying_ , which is half the reason we’ve still churned out Jaeger pilots; to head them off. We need to be at the front of this. And if we can beat them to it and take the fight to them, we stand a better chance at protecting the only thing we’ve got, which is _this_ damn planet,” Nate said, almost shouting, clenching his teeth back together before he got the chance. “It’s our only solution. We’ve gotta study San. We’ve gotta figure out remote piloted Jaegers. And we’ve gotta end them before they end us.”

“That’s so stupid, though!” Newt stepped forward, even if he was still holding Hermann’s hand. “You’re going to open it up; that just makes it easier for them to get back here.”

“You’ve got any better plans?”

“I have _no_ plans because I don’t have them in my head anymore and I don’t – I don’t want. I don’t wanna even _think_ —”

“Ranger,” Hermann said quickly, cutting off Newton, who was visibly shaking. “I believe we require some time to think this over. I understand the decision is above us and we can’t change it, but you can comprehend that it would be upsetting to hear.”

“Yeah,” he answered, squeezing his hip bones instead of rubbing his eyebrow and hiding his face like he clearly wanted to. “Yes. Of course. It’s upsetting. Which, again, begs the question of how in the hell anybody found out. I was just walking out of that conference.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Jules said, almost playful again.

“Yes. I would. Clearly.”

She shrugged, but they were standing closer and an almost invisible language was flowing between them. Hermann did not wish to interpret it. He focused, instead, on the only person in the room and, arguably, in the world that required his absolute attention.

Newton shook his head in a jerky twitch. The nauseating anxiety rolling off him knocked against Hermann’s mind with a terrible urgency. Flashes of PONs units and scalpels and confusing trains of thought that hardly made any sense skipped across the bond. It would be inaccurate to say it did not give Hermann his headache, though that could also be a distant exhaustion finally settling in. Still. He gently pulled Newton to his chest and wrapped him up, letting him hide his face against Hermann’s chest.

Newton was saying _something_ , muffled heavily by Hermann’s ridiculous tourist shirt and heavy winter coat he had not bothered to shuck off.

“What was that?” Hermann asked, leaning closer and shrugging up his coat as a paltry barrier.

“What the fuck are we doing?” Newton whispered harshly. “I don’t want this. You can’t trust me, dude. You can’t. You can’t put me near him, alright? I can’t do this. Fuck this. What are we doing? Fuck this.”

“Dr. Geiszler?” Nate looked away from Jules when he heard the rising panic. “If you have any thoughts about the subject—”

“San, dude. It’s fucking _San_. Okay?” Newton barked, curling his fingers into Hermann’s shirt. “It’s Newt. It’s San. Fuck you.”

“Breathe,” Hermann said as he slipped a hand under Newton’s shirt and rubbed his back. He felt cold. And usually Hermann was the one with poor circulation. “Lambert, could we please have some time?”

“Newt, if you have—”

“Please,” Hermann said more insistently.

And thank bloody Christ for someone with any sense because Jules was the one who tugged Nate’s arm, took a stand in front of him, and simply said, “Of course.”

“Jules.”

“Ah.” She cut Nate off at the quick and pushed him out of the room.

It would have been easier and perhaps kinder if they had gone anywhere with proper furniture. The room really was just a storage closet, not yet filled in with whatever needs the base had. That rare moment of peace garnered after an averted apocalypse that saw these lapses in requisition orders. There was a sturdy table, which suggested it was supposed to be a conference room at some point. Or had been set up by some staff with the intent to play a game during downtime and never had the chance to drag in the folding chairs to complete the set up. All the same, it was a surface and Hermann walked Newton over to it, forcing him to sit down. He jutted his hip against the side of it to relieve some of the pressure while keeping a direct line of contact with Newton.

“What are your thoughts?” Hermann asked.

Newton, poor man, whimpered.

“It’s alright. Share them with me.”

He should have just walked out onto the upper levels and jumped into the ocean. It would have been less overwhelming than the crash of thoughts and feelings suddenly ripped loose from Newton’s mind. Hermann gasped but he stayed firm, stood tall, and said nothing about it. He wasn’t going to punish Newton for letting him in. Never. He clenched his fist over his knotted hip and tapped it twice. The dull, vibrating pain snapped him back to his body and he shook his head. Not the best solution, but a quick life preserve tossed his way.

“Yes, alright,” he said quietly, touching Newton’s face. “Breathe, Newton.”

“I _am_ breathing!”

Technically true, but beside the point. He was coiled up tight, forcing out a shuddering breath. Hermann brushed his thumb across the scruff on his chin, the almost-beard that had been growing in. He’d have a proper one in another day or so and Hermann was a little jealous of it. He was annoyed at the patchy growth on his chin. God, they needed to get home and clean themselves up. Proper clothes. Proper shower. Proper bed. He let these simple annoyances push through back to Newton. A distraction. And his thumb scraping back and forth on his skin. Another distraction. A gentle kiss on his forehead. The hand on his back and the lean body insulated by a big ugly coat that would be better if it was green and fringed with fur and smelled like home, but that was okay too. It was okay. It was coming back, and it was okay.

“There you are,” said Hermann. He continued to rub Newton’s back gently. “I knew I could keep you.”

“You have to,” Newton said miserably, like he wanted to cry but couldn’t.

“Of course.”

“We need to get out of here.” Newton started to slump forward. He had burned out the last of his mental reserves and was getting tired again. Hermann reminded himself to discuss with Dr. Sambre about getting him back on his medications to help even out these dizzying highs and lows. It was hardly his fault; mental health was tricky, and Hermann would never disparage him for seeking out care. “Yeah. Dr. Sambre. She’s coming here, right?”

“To clear us, yes.”

“Ah, fingers fucking crossed.”

“Toes too, if you like.”

“I like,” Newton answered, pushing his face against Hermann’s neck. “God, I want you. And I wanna sleep. Like, dead sleep. Jake’s still sleeping? I want that.”

“I think that’s our best option. Wait until Dr. Sambre visits. Then we’ll figure out what to do about—”

“San.”

“Yes.”

Newton swallowed, nodding against Hermann. “Yeah,” he said through an exhale, kissing Hermann’s jaw. “Think they’re still outside?”

“Absolutely.”

“Let’s go get locked up. Take me to bed?”

As though that weren’t enticing enough. Hermann hummed his approval, helping Newton up off the table again—that would have been good to utilize if they had any energy between them and weren’t afraid of Jules and Nate interrupting. They opened the door and Hermann asked again for a cabin, somewhere quiet. He almost suggested that the two go to their own, but he wasn’t about to presume the Rangers’ schedules. Let them exhaust themselves for all he liked. He just wanted to lie down with Newton and—

\---

Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Okay.

You’re okay.

Sure.

Okay.

Okay, so, okay. So.

Stop, breathe. Breathe.

Okay.

So, they want to keep San. Sweet. Sucks that that’s sweet, doesn’t it? It does. The reason, and we’re nothing but reasonable—ha ha ha—that it _sucks_ is because, you know, end of the world implications. End. Of the fucking. World. These idiots who think they can reign in the potential Breach tech from your fucking whatever—creation, subject, thing, something else—are going to kick off the apocalypse. You have two choices, really.

Option one. Right? Option one, you help them. Yeah, you get right in there with them and you tap into what you think you know versus what you know you know and you develop the tech with them. You open the Breach. You send Jaeger pilots over. You probably end up Drifting with San because the curiosity is just gonna eat you up anyways, and you’re taking lead on that because, hey, who else can risk it, right? Nobody. Definitely not Hermann, who you already see high up on his ridiculous ladder, sweeping equations to stabilize the Breach for _us_ and not for _them_ , muttering quietly to himself, probably these annoyingly sweet and brilliant little things that slip over into German and rain down on you like notes from fucking on high or something. You fucking idiot, you’re so in love.

Anyways, he can’t Drift with San. He’ll be pissed. You’ll be pissed, too, because all it’s going to do is connect you back to the Hivemind, damage your brain irreparably, imbue some dangerous intelligence in a dangerous creature, or destroy you some other way you can’t puzzle out yet. It. Will. Destroy you. You know this. You know.

Which leads easily into option two. Option two is simple. Option two is you kill San.

And _fuuuuuuuck_ that hurts.

Ask yourself the easiest question of all, okay? Okay, so, why does it hurt? It hurts, _Newton_ , because you created him. And you keep denying this, _Newton_ , but you fathered that thing. You. Fucking. _Fathered_. A _fucking_. **_Kaiju_**. Badass, sure, goddamn insane miracle, sure, but you just managed to make the monster you thought was lurking somewhere in you a reality. Jesus, that sounds stupid. _Quite enough of that, thank you_.

Ah. Hermann. Always there to….

Always there.

Shit, he’s always there!

He's always there.

You. Well, okay, good. Okay? Cause you love him.

Okay.

So.

\---

—for whatever reason, it was easier this time. Hermann didn’t flinch or growl or anything at the sound of the lock clicking into place. He shuffled along, gripping Newton’s arm, and led him to the bed, easing them both down. Newton was quiet, at least physically, chewing on his thoughts the same as he chewed on his lip.

“Darling man,” Hermann said fondly, halfway between a scold and complete adoration. He shucked his coat, finally, and helped Newton out of his brightly colored shirt, replaced instead by the brightly colored tattoos. He didn’t react and Hermann tentatively poked the Drift bond again for any apprehension, relieved to find none. Newton laid back on the bed, closing his eyes as Hermann kissed his stomach, then down to his waistband. He removed shoes, socks, unbuttoned his trousers and peeled them down too. Once Newton was in his boxers—a pale blue pair that had come from Hermann’s supplies again, but at least they were better than those drab grey ones he had been wearing earlier—Hermann stretched back up again and kissed his cheek.

“Which option are you going for?” he whispered, brushing back Newton’s hair.

“Debating,” Newton answered, his voice thick, a drugged-like quality as he started to doze.

“I think we can figure it out.” He kissed Newton’s lips, smiling at the ridiculous man who twitched his mouth to return the favor. “It’s alright. Sleep.”

Hermann waited until Newton’s breathing was evened out, his heart rate slowing, and the first pop of color from his dreams bled out. Even then, he laid there, watching him and listening to him, tracing the various lines on his skin. He wasn’t sure when he closed his eyes too, tucked up next to Newton. He would have said something about putting his shoes on the bed, but, for now, that didn’t really matter. It just didn’t. He was there. That's all the mattered.


	24. Million Gold Star Memes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Sambre comes to visit and clear Newton and Hermann from suspicion of being controlled by the Precursors. While Newt needs to have a talk, Hermann needs to take a smoke break.

“You’re lucky I like you.”

Newton had to hold back or risk running and jumping the woman at the end of the hall. “I can’t believe that to be true. You know for a fact I keep fighting that.”

“And yet,” she answered with a disarming shrug.

Newt walked at a reasonable pace—not quite a jog—to meet the woman, giving and accepting a brief but happy hug. He asked about her flight, the whole travel ordeal and how much bullshit that must’ve been. Hermann stayed behind to watch them with the eye of an anthropologist or, perhaps more accurately, a fretting fiancé. Still, he smiled when Newton smiled, and he managed to relax his stance when he was motioned to come and join them.

“Dr. Sambre,” Hermann said cordially, extending his hand when he stood before her.

“Dr. Gottlieb,” she responded in kind, shaking his hand.

Dr. Nora Sambre was a petite woman, perhaps in her early fifties, with a sensibly short haircut and plain glasses on a thin nose. She was want to wear simple colors, trending towards earth tones more than anything else, with long sleeves and high collars. This made her look sensible, and Hermann thought he recognized a fashion statement as a barrier to the world. But where she might wear her armor, she did as much enchanting with a smile. It was warm and understanding and asked the receiver to share their burden. The woman was in the right field, if anything.

“I hear you two have been quite busy,” she said, holding up what had to be their medical records from all the tests yesterday.

“Oh, you know us. It’s never fun unless you’re trying to kill yourself.”

“Newton,” Hermann said gently. He waved away the concern, laughed, and took Hermann’s hand at his side.

“So. Anyways. Did you get a chance to review it yet?”

Dr. Sambre shook her head. “Just been delivered, I’m afraid. Perhaps after the review, we can talk?” She motioned towards them with the edge of the folder. “May I say, ‘congratulations.’”

Newton beamed. He still insisted on the absurd little paperclip, but he held it up and showed it off like it was diamond and gold. Hermann smiled too, enjoying the ecstatic energy radiating off him. He worried, of course, that this was all too fast. That they had hardly dated and did not have time to get their affairs in order and that he had sprung the question on the man in the middle of a forced Drift, but those concerns were pushed aside at every measure by Newton.

“I love you, idiot,” Newton said simply. “Only known you twenty goddamn years.”

“Oh, that’s all.”

“Only loved you twenty…goddamn years.”

“I love you too, horrible little man,” Hermann answered.

And that seemed about good enough.

Dr. Sambre’s was the first proper comment on it and while Hermann had envisioned whomever he had managed to trick into marrying him—preposterous! Nobody would take him, surely; madness to even dream it!—he would share the news with his brothers and sister first. He supposed Jake had been nice about it, considering what Newton and done to him. Still. It was nice to hear it outright, all the same.

“Thank you,” Hermann said after it was clear Newton was going to continue grinning like a fool. Which he was, of course. “And thank you for coming all this way. As Newton said, it must have been terribly inconvenient.”

“Oh, not at all. Does this mean I may call you Hermann?”

“I would much prefer….”

“Of course.” She nodded her head, tipping it higher in greeting. “Ah. And here comes the cavalry.”

They turned on cue to see Jules and Nate and, oddly enough—even Hermann wasn’t entirely sure why he was surprised by the fact—Jake Pentecost coming up to join them. The three walked abreast, nobody leading or trailing behind. They looked a little better between the three of them, puzzle pieces fitting back into place and a sense of ease that had been missing.

“Gentlemen. Dr. Sambre,” Nate said, holding out his hand to shake hers. “Glad you could join us on short notice.”

“Glad you trust me to sort this matter,” she answered with the same efficiently friendly nod.

“We got it sorted that these two aren’t being piloted by Precursors anymore?” Jake asked.

“Not quite. But I’m told we should have good news.”

“Ah huh. Please, lead the way,” Nate said and motioned for them to head down the hall to a conference room set aside specifically for this task.

The review was lengthy, checked and re-checked by Dr. Sambre with the medical staff on the base and a call over to a neural specialist in Hong Kong. Hermann and Newton were asked to wait, seated in almost-comfortable chairs. Jake and Jules were next to them and it was clear early on that they were there to be on guard duty. Hermann could not help but feel he was being reviewed for a presented thesis. Awaiting trial was more accurate. Hearing back about potential health concerns even more so. He fiddled his fingers, his healthier leg bouncing on the chair and glanced over at Newton, who had on one of his trained smiles. Newton reached over and touched Hermann’s leg.

“You got that from me,” he whispered apologetically.

“I don’t think I’m much of a fan,” Hermann whispered back.

“We need fidget spinners.”

“Oh, never, Newton.”

“Rubix cubes?”

“Slightly better.”

“You want a Sudoku puzzle book.”

“Don’t _at_ me, Newton.”

“Oh my _god_.” That came from Jake nearby, hiding his face in his hands. It was his fault for eavesdropping. He received a look from Jules, another from Nate, the three of them continuing to converse silently. Nobody seemed ready to raise their words above a whisper for fear of disturbing the work that was being taken apart by Dr. Sambre and her team.

Hermann simply took Newton’s hand and tried to lean back in the chair, closing his eyes. His free hand went into his pocket and tightened, not enough to crack glass, but enough. Just enough. His leg, unfortunately, kept bouncing.

\---

“So?”

You sit back, and it all feels a little overplayed, a little cliché. You sit back, expecting a chaise lounge, a high-backed leather chair, and a spider plant in the corner for some reason, because they’re easy and you just cannot kill those things. Perfect plant for a shrink’s office. But this isn’t just a “shrink” and this isn’t her office. This is an honest army base closet conference room with minimalistic furniture and an overactive air vent overhead (Hermann hates that, right? It’s too cold. It actually _is_ too cold. You’re shivering. You used to like the cold, but if he gets restless leg, you can take on a little temperature intolerance, probably. Sucks, but not that much.) This is Dr. Goddamn-Save-Your-Goddamn-Life-With-Too-Many-Goddamn-Lesson-Plans Sambre. Except not that either. Hero worship got nobody nowhere. Something like that. Little bit of Hero Worship got you a big head and disappointed fans and, uh, roundabout anger issues because, uh, Precursors, so, like. Idea still stands.

Shit, wait, you two were talking. Shit. About what?

_It’s going to be okay, darling._

It is, Hermann, you absolute sap, but, like….

Wait, shit!

“Sorry, what?”

_Breathe. I’m on my way._

Oh god, be careful.

“Sorry, Nora. Sorry. I’m a little, uh, distracted.”

“That’s alright.” She smiles and folds her hands, with that _I like you, but I’m not taking any shit, Newt_ look on her face. “Tell me again about Russia.”

“Again?” You blow out a big puff of air, tucking one foot under the other leg and sort’ve just hold yourself. “Ugh. _Fine_. The good, the bad, or the ugly?”

“Start wherever you like,” she said, and gently pushes away a piece of lint off her pantleg. You stare at the spot, fixed to it. Pinned to it. Dissected frog on the corkboard. Makes more sense than a newt. Leave the fucking frogs alone.

 _Breathe_.

Well, you’re trying.

“Okay, so, number one, fuck me for being an asshole, but, like, what am I supposed to do when I almost have answers? Uh, leave it alone? _Not_ pick at the wound?” You wave your hand before she even pretends like she’s going to respond, because Dr. Sambre is not going to respond. Not yet. But just in case, you block her answer with your hand and say, “Yes, I mean, obviously, but. Okay. Well, also, uh, I didn’t get to have anything for the flight, so. Number one, actually, is that.”

“That—”

“Flying sucks.”

“Ah.”

“So, like, if we want to blame shit, let’s start there.” You shift again, now with both feet on the chair. “No, wait, blame isn’t the right word, obviously. Obviously, I’m just…well, hold on. Projecting.”

Because, of course, you have this bad habit of trying to solve the riddle first and this time the riddle is you and you love yourself so goddamn much that you go right into hating yourself at the drop of a hat and you want to psychoanalyze yourself before she does so you can compare notes and get a gold star for figuring it out first. Obviously. And it’s pretty goddamn easy, isn’t it? Manic-depressive, sure, bpd, maybe, ADHD with a sprinkle of narcissism, and, uh, survivor’s guilt? Okay, whatever, just cobbling together terms already to pin down on the little harmless newt stapled to the board oh _god_! Aviophobia. So, half the battle is using the right terms for the field. Dissociative fugue state. Like, a dictionary does half the work if you want it to. Hell, _Google_. Google shit. Google aviophobia versus aerophobia and come back with a million gold star memes, needy prick. Right?

 _Breathe, Newton_.

Oh, if it were just so goddamn easy, we’d all be champs.

\---

Hermann left the room on the behest of Dr. Sambre, who wanted time to talk to Newton. Of course she did. He wasn’t particularly pleased with leaving them alone, especially when he could feel the ripples of anxiety jumping across the Drift bond. However, he needed this opportunity. So he walked out with the others, standing awkwardly in the hallway. It was a very good time to have a phone to look through, but, alas, he still had not charged the bloody thing. He wondered if a part of him was doing this on purpose. A mild slip in his mental faculties to keep him unentertained so he would have to focus on Newton. Or, more accurately, Hermann just didn’t think to grab his charger and was looking to place blame.

His mind echoed with the conversation Newton was having with Dr. Sambre. Place blame. Project.

Hermann shook his head.

What was needed, at least in the moment, was a distraction and the focus to spot it. He was granted one of those when Jake Pentecost, leaning back against the wall and making eyes at Officer Lambert, was pulled away by a text message. He lazily checked his phone—oh, of course, trust _him_ to have charged his own… _children_ and their bloody cellulars—when his body went rigid. Nate sensed the change without needing to see it.

“What’s—”

“Blue,” Jake said simply. The man looked pale and, for a moment, Hermann thought he was going to drop to the ground. “Nate?”

“Go,” Nate said and touched Jules’ arm. “Go with him. Make sure—”

“Got it.” She gripped his arm and was at Jake’s side, the two of them nearly running down the hallway.

Hermann shifted, putting his back to the retreating figures and angling his face away from Nate. “Should I ask?”

“You can,” Nate answered without looking over. “You won’t get an answer.”

“Then I suppose I’ll keep to myself.”

Again, and not for the last time, Hermann put his hand in his pocket and palmed the small item enclosed. Focus. Distraction. He licked his upper lip and finally turned about to face Nate. “Officer Lambert, I—”

“Really?” Nate asked, almost letting that tough exterior crack again. Hermann smiled, tilting his head.

“Right. _Nate_.” He winced when he said the name. _Breathe_ , he reminded himself. “I was…well, it’s quite silly. But.” And he let the sentence dangle, waiting for Nate to pick it back up.

“Go on,” Nate prompted.

“Well, while Newton has his session and, I mean, Dr. Sambre was kind enough to clear us.”

“Again,” Nate said.

“Again, yes. For Newton. Of course.”

“Of course,” Nate repeated.

“Yes, I was just wondering if it would be alright if I stepped outside for a quick smoke break.”

Nate’s eyebrow peaked up and Hermann had the distinct impression that it was doing that without his full say-so. He couldn’t help but bite back a smile. The question was simple. _You smoke?_ But Nate did not allow himself to ask it. He was weighing the options of whether or not he would have to accompany Hermann or wait outside the door for Newton to come out. Which was the greater threat to the people here that he cared about. The answer was neither, but Hermann was banking on Nate still holding a bias. Hermann leaned heavier on his cane to accentuate that he was not the type to run off. Not literally, at least.

That, and Nate very much seemed like the type of person who would think smoking a nasty habit and would tarnish his All-American jock image. It was a hunch, but it seemed to pay off.

“There’s a service exit down the hall,” he said at last, bobbing his head.

“Thank you,” Hermann answered. He padded his pockets, the same woolen slacks he had first worn on their trip, and then down the front of the long-sleeved sweater that was in need of a wash. He feigned finding his pack just before he turned the corner. The comfort of a quick smoke curled temptingly around his mind, but he shook it off and walked with greater purpose as soon as he was out of sight.

_Did you give it up because of me?_

_I’d give up many things just for you,_ liebling.

Hermann walked quickly and firmly, following a memorized tract. He knew he didn’t have much time, and, to be absolutely frank, he wanted this done.

_To be doubly frank, I haven’t completely given it up._

_No, I totally know. You can’t hide the smell very well._

_I’m sorry._

_Nah, don’t be, dude._

If anything, he had to smile. Though, of course, the usual Dr. Gottlieb around the PPDC Shatterdomes was not one who smiled much. Not that they were at the Shatterdome. Not that they were their usual selves. Hermann chewed his tongue and walked with purpose. Head held high, acting like he was exactly where he needed to be.

The problem was that there was a great deal less people in civilian clothes here on the base and far fewer of them looked like Hermann. Not that he was a fashion icon by any stretch, but his stuffy “grandpa clothes,” as Newton declared them, did seem to stick out like a sore thumb. He had to rely on the look of a man who knew where he was going.

Hermann was stopped a handful of times, mostly people asking him if he was lost, which he assured them he was not. The further along he got, the more informed the people were, and a gentleman with a tight-haircut and shoulders the size of a prize ox cut in front of his path.

“Are you Dr. Gottlieb?” the man asked in an even, brutally deep voice.

“I am,” Hermann answered. He refused to waver. He had to trust his voice to stay steady when it was hardly a steady thing to begin with. Well, to be certain, it only wavered when he was facing Newton. Now he was doing something important _for_ Newton. He dug in and found his voice, that’s what he did. “Kindly move aside.”

“There were orders that you and Dr. Geiszler were to be detained.”

“We were detained. We are clearly no longer detained,” Hermann said, narrowing his eyes in annoyance. “Look, if you’re so worried, you should talk to Dr. Sambre.”

“Who is Dr. Sambre?”

“The very same woman who cleared us,” Hermann answered. He scanned the man’s uniform quickly and spotted the PPDC insignia. Not a pilot. Not a ranger. One of the techs, but staring too long was going to make him suspicious. “Look, you’re on top of all this; I can see that. You know I’m part of the PPDC and while I do not have my credentials on me, I can assure you, I have business just on the other side of that door.”

Hermann and the guard looked at the door, then back to each other.

“Reach out to Ranger Reyes, if you must,” Hermann said, knowing she was head of J-Tech. He couldn’t risk this man talking to Lambert and hopefully Jules was busy with whatever had started Jake.

“You know what’s in there?” the man asked quietly.

“I was head of k-science,” Hermann said, again, jutting out his chin, puffing up his chest in a haughty display of superiority. “If _anyone_ should be inspecting the specimen, it would most certainly be me.”

_Do you feel super ridiculous?_

_Lord, yes. Vile._

The man clicked his tongue and nodded. “Was?” he finally asked with a little tilt of his head.

Hermann almost swallowed his tongue.

“Well,” he said slowly, his mind turning over too quickly. “As you said earlier, we _were_ detained. A small lapse in my position. Look, if you want to join me while I gather a sample, by all means.” He pulled out the clear vial in his pocket, indicating where he would be storing kaiju blood. At least the man was smart enough to be warry of _that_.

“Oh, no. No, I think I’m good there,” the man answered, stepping back like he was in danger of being splashed with toxic blood. “That…looks like a small sample size. You’re good.”

The man stepped aside, and Hermann walked towards the room like he was immensely insulted at being stopped and questioned, being so very very important and so very very pressed for time.

The room is better lit than he expected. And warmer, too, now that he has taken the time to pay attention to his surroundings. The whole bloody base had the AC cranked to eleven— _what does that even mean, Newton?_ —and Hermann had donned both his sweater and a long-sleeved shirt underneath and a white undershirt beneath that. He hated the cold. He _loathed_ the cold. But now that he was somewhere that made his neck damp, he was shivering.

“Hello, San,” he said for the simply need to say something.

The tank was the primary focus of the room. It took up most of the space, filled with a saline solution that seemed to be to the creature’s liking.

_Not creature, Herms. Not from you, too._

There was a radio playing in the corner, some lilting tune from the twenty-teens era. They had apparently moved on from the soft folksy rock of the 70s. _San_ seemed to enjoy it, slowly undulating back and forth behind the glass. Near the radio was a small medical set up. A sink. A cabinet. A steel table that would look appropriate in Newton’s lab covered in kaiju parts. Hermann spotted the drawer and opened it, relieved to see sealed hypodermic needles inside. He grabbed one and prepped a syringe. He simply needed to get up to the creature, ah, to San, of course, which would not be terribly difficult. There was a steep ladder on the north side of the tank that went up to the edge where they could dump food down to San. Hermann wondered briefly what it…what _he_ ate and realized he knew the answer to be fish and knew the answer to be the specific types of fish that he enjoyed.

Of course.

Hermann tired to move to the ladder and found his feet stuck. He even glanced down, half-expecting to see his shoes trapped in a cartoonish tar spill, only to spot the clean tiled floor.

“Newt,” he said softly aloud, which caused San…the creature… _San_ to look up from the tank. He cleared his throat and tried again but didn’t budge. “Newton, please.”

It was simply fear that froze him, even if it wasn’t his own. Hermann waited a moment, steeled himself, and made his way over to the ladder.

“ _I sung you, your twinges. I suffered you, your tattletales.”_

Hermann ignored the song and even the way that San tracked his movements towards the ladder, turning tightly in the confines as he realized that that was where food came from and someone was there to feed him. A trained pet.

_Don’t be cruel. Right now, don’t be cruel._

_I’m not cruel, Newton_.

_Please, dude. Please._

It was, of course, Newton who had done the calculation for the dose of diprenorphine in relation to body mass and biology of a creature that only Newton could understand. He was very insistent that it should not be something painful or malicious, but he could also not be the one to do it. And, of course, Hermann did not want to be cruel. But he could be the one to do it. Absolutely. He prepped the syringe and pulled out the clear vial because he would do this. Absolutely.

At the top of the ladder, Hermann sat on the small ledge right next to the water, which rippled with activity as San eagerly turned back and forth, his dark mass an uncomfortable, nightmarish thing to watch. Hermann’s heart hammered painfully up in his neck as he waited. He could not help but think of _Jaws_ , expecting a great white to breach and snap him in half. Would San breach and try the same?

A mossy patch of hair broke the water tension and the unbearably human-like eyes peaked up at him. San tilted his head inquisitively, floating at the surface. He looked around and didn’t see any offering off food, but didn’t appear angry. Inquisitive, just the same way Newton tilted his head when he was puzzling something.

“H-H-Hello,” Hermann said. Ah, there it went. The wavering voice. He had to clear his throat. “Hello, San.”

The song was a little louder up here, close to the water. Hermann could almost feel it vibrating through him.

“ _All I wanted was a sliver to call mine. All I wanted was a shimmer in your shine. To make me better._ ”

Hermann closed his eyes and when he opened them, nearly jumped back and fell down the stairs in one leap. San had swam silently up to the ledge, putting slimy clawed fingers into the grating and opened his mouth wide as he waited for food. The vial in hand could have been crushed or thrown, but Hermann simply jerked his leg back and let his mind blank through the sizzle of pain before he realized San wasn’t coming any closer.

“I’m…I’m terribly sorry. I don’t have anything for you to eat,” Hermann said, feeling small and a little useless. He tapped his foot, looking down at the fingers. Very close. So very close. He leaned forward, moving painfully slow, until the needle was hovering over the rubbery, greenish-tinted skin. He swallowed.

It was easier than he thought it would be. There was a warmth that flooded him, like he had drugged himself, before he realized that was Newton reaching out to him. He didn’t pat the hand on the ledge, curling back as soon as the plunger was completely decompressed. Quick. Painless, by the looks of things. San snorted when he realized no fish from this one, and slipped back into the water. Hermann stared again, trying to breathe, as he watched the dark shape settle down at the bottom, stretching out, and going completely still by the end of the next song.

It was better. This was better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like there were a few things I wanted to note here, but mostly I just want to point out they're listening to "Make You Better" by the Decemberists because I wanna say it was @nighthawkms who pointed out that was a perfect Newmann Song and they were correct.
> 
> Anyways, thank you thank you thank you for those that read this. What even is this thing? I dunno, but we're getting closer to the end. We're doing it!


	25. Guess You Can Keep Returning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we face consequences, deal with the devil that is Dad, and then get on with our lives. (Or! The one where I brought Lars in because what is fanfiction but, just, a ton of indulgences, honestly.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The penultimate chapter, my friends! I thought we could knock this one out this chapter, but, c'mon. We got one more. We can do this. We're making these two happy AS. PROMISED.

“Do you have _any_ idea what you’ve done?”

This refrain keeps getting repeated, namely by Lambert, but a few others come down with righteous fury when they find Hermann with the deceased subject some time later. Perhaps they are hoping for a different answer. That they want him to apologize. That they want him to beg for forgiveness. That they want him to make this right again, to face the encroaching fear that the war is not over, and they do not know how to stand up to that any longer and are they stubborn enough to endure.

They will.

They must.

That is humanity.

However, each time someone barks in his face about how they can’t _believe_ he did this at this juncture when it is _so important_ , Hermann assures them that, yes, he knew precisely what he was doing. No, he was not trying to thwart the PPDC’s efforts. Yes, he would gladly take a dishonorable discharge. No, he’s not gone mad. Quite the opposite. There’s a wonderful, long, lonely stretch of peace he hasn’t known in a while and he relishes in it.

For a time, they’re put away in a cell, as though they’ve committed terrible acts against humanity ( _you know that’s_ exactly _what I did, and I don’t appreciate your candor_ ). They’re forced to wait for someone with more authority to fix this little problem that has become the Drs. Gottlieb and Geiszler and turn a dead specimen into an asset. The only wrinkle in the waiting is that they are in separate cells, staring at empty walls, and anything with a time piece is removed. Hermann isn’t entirely sure the anxiety is all Newt this time around, but he does his best to temper it. They trade thoughts. They trade feelings. They trade songs along the ghost bond and rub their fingers together as they bide their time and this, for what it is, is enough.

It is Tendo Choi’s hard-won mantra, of course. They will endure this.

_Oh, we gotta call him up. Invite him to the wedding._

_I presumed you had called “dibs” on him being your best man._

_Or officiant. Either or, really._

_Let’s just wait on planning until we’re out of here,_ liebling. _It won’t do much good if we’re going to be in for an extended stay._

_Oh god. Just kill us._

Hermann smiled at his hands, rubbing the spot on his finger between joint and knuckle. Dramatics aside, this was becoming close to unbearable. He had to wonder what was taking them so long. The option seemed so obvious. He had done something bad. Newt was a liability. Send them on their way. Who on Earth needed to cross their t’s and dot their i’s on the final signature that dismissed them? Someone from the council, almost certainly. He’d be glad to get rid of that headache. And perhaps the two would have to live in obscurity for a while – forever if they must – but it would be worth it. Just as soon as this was over.

There was a sound coming down the hallway, a steady stride that knocked against Hermann’s memories. He sat up when he recognized it, inadvertently pinching the skin on his empty finger. He grabbed up his cane and rose when a shadow passed in front of the small viewing window of his cell.

_Wait, shit, is someone coming for you?_

Hermann felt the bond waver as a shiver rippled through him. He tried his damndest not to sweat when the door clicked and pulled away. Even out his breathing. Yes, fine, pass a hand across his bangs to get them laid down evenly instead of the ridiculous coifs and cowlicks jutting up every which way. Presentable. That’s what he was. He was presentable. He was not shorting out and he was not overcome with a loud thrum in his ears and he was decidedly _not_ shaking. More. Still.

_Herms? Hold on. Okay?_

He could pretend very easily that Newton’s hand covered his own on the head of his cane, squeezing it in sequence. _I. Love. You._

“You do not have to stand for me.”

Well, that was a bloody good lie, right off the bat, wasn’t it? An obvious test right there. Hermann squeezed his hands together and straightened his spine to drive the point home. Of course he would stand for Lars Gottlieb. To do otherwise would open the door for disaster.

_Herms. Seriously?_

_Oh, I’m dead serious, Newton._

Herr Doktor Lars Gottlieb was an imposing man. Hermann just barely made it up to his height, but he did not have the girth that his brothers took from the Gottlieb gene pool. His face was stern, and it was laughable how much you could see Hermann mirrored back. His hair was short and neat and the lines from his comb distinctly laid out in the silvery gray, like everything else had been laid out. Perfect. Even his suit and tie and everything seemed ironed out. Hermann had never felt more bloody unprepared than if he had been caught in a mud puddle with scraped knees and a torn shoulder in his school uniform.

“You do not look well.”

“Ah. Thank you,” Hermann answered, scowling. Right off the bat, then. He almost touched the bold fresh scar on his head from being tossed on the ship when they had caught San or tugged his clearly-slept-in-and-tired clothes into a better shape. He opted to jut out his jaw. “Why are you here?”

“Same question, I think.” Lars turned to the guard and waved him away, only turning around to face his son when the door was properly closed, leaving them locked up together.

_What was that about dying earlier, darling? Let’s go for that, shall we?_

“You may sit,” Lars said, motioning for the cot that Hermann had been using as a bench since he was first brought here.

“I think I’d rather stand.”

“Suit yourself.” Lars folded his hands neatly behind his back and stood there, waiting. It was very much like a mountain settling into it’s place, a finality in his stance that could not be rivaled. Hermann kept his lip buttoned. He ignored the little stripe of sweat down his back. It was, oddly enough, Lars who took the noticeable drag of air that broke the silence. “Why are—”

“Yes, I already repeated that back, father.”

“I do not think you have the footing here to—”

“Oh _god_ ,” Hermann muttered bitterly, rounding his shoulders. He lifted his cane and shook it, thinning out his lips. “ _Thank_ you.”

“You presume my meaning. _Du wirst nicht direkt mit mir reden. In einer Weise, die bequemer ist. Du bist ungehorsam_ —”

“Disobeyed?” Hermann snapped. “ _Yes_. Yes, I bloody well did! Please. God, please tell me you weren’t part of the council that approved study on—”

“I will _not_ be berated,” Lars said, raising his voice for the first time since he entered. Hermann, on simple childhood instinct, went silent. He put the foot of his cane on the ground and covered the handle with both hands, tilting his face to the ground. Lars took a steadying breath. “What you did…against the PPDC, even, has _earned_ you a discharge. I came here straight away—”

“Oh, for me? How thoughtful.”

“Would you be quiet?” Lars’ eyebrows pinched down, carving in that crease that split his forehead. “I came here to help with the initiation of the study of the Breach Tech. Our timelines happen to meet. You might imagine I did not trust these—”

“No, you wouldn’t. How did you get talked into this one, Father? A little less comforting than a wall, I think. Less conservative than—”

“You do not get to pass your judgements, Hermann.”

Right. Of course. Like that would stop him.

_God, I love you._

_Thank you,_ mein Schatz.

Lars closed his eyes and smoothed out his features. Hermann recognized this from his youth and felt another little jab in his stomach. He was a child. He was always a child. He was always less than. He was always handled with the mind of someone who knew he could break. Who had seen him break. Who did not trust him to stand back up again and prove himself. God, why did it have to be Herr Doktor Gottlieb to come and deliver this? Why anyone?

_We’re cursed, dude._

_I imagine._

“You and your colleague—”

Hermann had to fight the urge to roll his eyes. He won out, but it was not an easy task.

“—will be escorted from the premise and returned to your PPDC issued domicile at 14:00. I’m told they will let you keep the apartment for three months while you find accommodations. Your…Karla would like to extend an invite to her home over in Berlin, if you’d like.”

Hermann raised an eyebrow at the thought. Oh, but Lars would cave to Karla’s berating. Thank god he found room to listen to at least _one_ of his children.

Lars cleared his throat and there was a shift that made Hermann finally look up. “ _Ich bin von dir enttäuscht. Ich bin enttäuscht von dem, was du getan hast. Aber ich bin nicht überrascht._ ”

Hermann’s mouth twitched. He wasn’t at all surprised, honestly, that his father was _disappointed_ in him. He always had been. But the finality of his words was still a hammer.

“Mm. _Danke, Vater._ ”

_Please, sir, may I have another?_

_Oh, not now, Newton, darling._

_Yeah. Still. Fuck him, though. He’s so_ not _invited to the wedding._

Hermann’s mouth curled up at the corner as his father laid out the rest of the terms of the agreement set forth by the PPDC council. Hermann supposed this really was something important made by the fact that Herr Doktor Gottlieb had come all this way to deliver the message to his disgraced son. Possibly gloating. Possibly love, in some terribly mangled fashion of the word. He imagined the spirit of his mother had a hand in this, somewhere. Somehow.

Hermann took his lashing standing, thank you, and when Lars ran out of words and stares, he simply turned and knocked on the door.

At least there was a simple outcome to all of this. They got to go home.

\---

It’s wasn’t exactly with a whoop and holler, but Newton did seem to have a renewed bounce in his step when they walked up to the apartment and found there were no armed guards waiting and watching. And Hermann was unsure how far they had betrayed them that he did not get a chance to say anything to Lambert, Pentecost, and Reyes before they were delivered to an airport on the mainland and flown back to MegaTokyo. They were just…gone.

Newton seemed lighter. Happier for this. Something terrible that had been dragging him down and down and down had been cut lose. The hazy threat of a certain kaiju-shaped shadow no longer overhead, as it were. Hermann did not say it and hardly thought it, but he was glad for what he had accomplished.

Newton threaded Hermann’s hands and tugged him inside, kicked the door shut, and undressed him before he was at the bedroom. They ended up on the couch, entangled and panting moist breath against each other’s skin, dozing in the warm sunlight through the small windows.

“Let’s get something with huge windows,” Newton said, his voice muffled in Hermann’s neck. He kissed, which earned him a hum, and then licked a stripe, which earned him a fluttery laugh. Newton picked up his head and smiled. “A garden. Oh, dude, let’s have a _garden_.”

“Why do we need a garden?”

“So I can go out there and scream and the sky when I get tired of doing translations,” Newton said simply. Obviously. Hermann smiled. He did not want to think of the data that Newton would pour over and send back to Jules—oh, the two were discharged, but he was still useful and he was still paying his penance, as it were. “And, also, like, don’t you want a cute little herb garden? For all your cooking needs.”

“Will you be tending it?”

“Shirtless.”

“Oh. Then I think we must have a garden,” Hermann said, arching his back as Newton skated fingers across his sides.

“See? Garden. Basement. Uh…windows. Reading nook. Reading, like, library. Of course. Let’s be real.”

“Let’s. And where should this presumptive house reside?” Hermann asked, tapping Newton’s thigh to shift him more towards the couch.

“Do you still have citizenship in the UK?”

“From my teaching days?”

Newton shrugged his answer. He dipped down and trailed his lips lazily across Hermann’s collarbone. _Fuck, I love this collarbone. This clavicle, right here. And that clavicle too, just as much. And this exact subscapularis is visionary. And it turns out this coracobrach—_

Hermann laughed, pinching Newton’s chin and pulling his face up. “Enough!”

“I have a lot to map out!” Newton insisted, pulling his chin free. “Dude, listen. Okay? This is all just temporary. All these lines and muscles and cells? They’re going to change again. Let me get a handle on this perfect specimen I’ve got right below me right now.”

“That implies imperfection to come. Are you calling me old?”

“Nah, I’m calling you perfect.” Newton kissed directly on the hinge of his neck, which was always the spot that made Hermann melt. “This is perfect. I just wanna stretch this out forever.”

“We will need to get up and start looking for places to live.”

“Mmm,” Newton answered, kissing down his neck.

“Well, at least start looking for _employment_. Surely that will—”

“ _Mmm_ ,” Newton answered, more insistently. He got caught up on Hermann’s shoulder and latched on, pulling a dull red mark to the surface.

“Oh…then to eat,” Hermann said, his voice wavering. “Eventually….” He moaned, unfortunately, and that was just the thing that Newton needed to be on him again.

\---

“What about Maine?”

You push yourself up tight next to Hermann, slipping an arm around his torso as you walk through the semi-busy streets. It’s impossible _not_ to be busy. It’s impossible to think of the toll enacted on these people and still have a smile on your face, so you push that thought aside. You focus instead on walking too close and probably showing too much affection, honestly, but who’s going to stop you? The police? Fucking. Go time.

“What _about_ Maine?” he asks in that dry, brittle voice he has when he’s caught off guard and his brain is trudging up with a million and one excuses to defend itself. God, you love him.

“No, I mean, Maine’s nice. We can get a nice place there, I bet. It’s next to the Atlantic, which, bonus. Have a garden, which, again, shirtless bonus. Hell, go teach at MIT. Except I hate Massachusetts. So, like, Maine, dude.” You bump his hip gently, because you’re not a total dick and you don’t want to knock his stride. “Plus, bonus-bonus- _bonus_ round? Stephen King lived there, so, like….”

“How is that a bonus round?” Hermann shifts, raising his arm to cover you across the shoulders and its warm and perfect. He pauses as ideas sneak in. “Oh, _Newton_. Look, I’ve had to deal with aliens for nearly half my life. Can we _please_ avoid the supernatural for the second half of it?”

“What?” you crow back. You’re loud. You’re always loud. You’re not always loud, but this is returning to the Way Things Were and there is a comfort in that that cannot be described. It’s hella awesome. “I’m going to get Mothman’s signature. Like. Fact.”

Hermann hugs you a bit closer, that little slightly-condescending-mostly-loving sorta way he does. And you smile. And you keep walking.

There’s only a month left to find a place and get the hell out of dodge before Daddy Gottlieb—ha, okay, but…gross—and all _kick_ you two out. Of your home, at least, and it wouldn’t be _that_ hard to find accommodations in MegaTokyo, but your little fieldtrip today is just another reminder of why you two need to leave. ASAP. The other reminder is that it’s getting closer and closer to winter and then spring and then just at the edge of summer, which will be just goddamn _perfect_ for Hermann. For Hermann and you, honestly. For Hermann and you to get married and fucking _yes_. But you need a home and you need a job and you need stability and you tuck your face up into Hermann’s high-collared jacket and breathe in a for a second.

You two should go home.

Or, well, you two should go back to the apartment. The apartment filled with boxes and the nervous energy of “where oh where will we go?” But that’s infinitely better than where you are going. Now.

“Are you alright?” Hermann asks in the softest, kindest voice you’ve ever heard. You nod.

“Yeah. I’m alright.”

He kisses your temple. It’s alright.

He hugs you into him. It’s more than alright.

He walks with you towards the Mako monument, the supremely well-constructed but impersonal statue, the fountain, the plaque reminder. You two slip apart, just a little, so that he can reach down and take your hand and squeeze it. Three times. _I. Love. You_.

It’s only because…well…you have to. You’re here because you have to be here. You have to say goodbye, right? That’s. Well, that’s it.

You walk up to the edge of the fountain, staring up at the statue, trying to see the Mako you remember under the stone and the lines driven in by age. Ten _fucking_ years. That’s what you remember. But it’s not fair, because that’s not what you’re here to do. You close your eyes and you think back. A smart young woman in engineering, firecracker spirit running circles around you and Herms there in the lab, honestly. Both physically and mentally, when she was really feeling up to the challenge. She knew how to play you two off each other, but she knew how to get you two to work together. She thrived. And because she thrived, you thrived. God, you were really family, weren’t you?

Hermann makes a thoughtful noise next to you—he makes a ton of noises, actually, for someone so quiet and buttoned up. He hums and he haws and he clicks his teeth and he moans and—that makes you open your eyes.

“What’s up, Herms?” you ask, tentatively pushing forward into the drift bond.

It’s getting harder. Not harder, just, less intense. More a backdrop radiation to your lives. More feelings and when they want to “read” each other, as Hermann likes to say, they have to reach out. They have to connect. They have to try. Sometimes Newt is too scared to make the leap, but he reaches out just in case he’s done something, or Hermann is hurting, or Hermann is lying about his feelings, or Hermann just missed him, or whatever. He reaches out just to see you all the time. So you have to return the favor, dude. That’s only fair.

He’s fine. Just thinking. He moves his chin. You follow the line of sight and almost burst out laughing. No, you burst out laughing. You cup your mouth and cage your laughter behind it so you don’t disturb anyone.

“God, _fuck_ ,” you whisper.

He squeezes your hand again and kisses your cheek when you start to tear up. You lean against him and, okay, you bury your head in his chest for a second because its so much, honestly. The world? The world is so much. It needs to be this compacted identity and you breathe in the dark, one-two-three, before you come out again, looking up at him. You get a kiss as a reward for returning. You guess you can keep returning, right?

“What do you say, darling man?” Oh, just fucking melt, Hermann, how is that fair? How is that fair how he says that? It isn’t. You love him. “Are you ready to go?”

You nod. You wish you had a second pair of glasses now to leave on the edge of the fountain. To say goodbye. Hermann, you sense, feels the same. And that’s just about all they can do for that.

\---

The laughter, of course, Hermann can understand. It is a bit silly when he spots it. But not even that, really, once he gives it a moment of consideration. These tokens to the shrine that is Miss. Mako Mori. Hermann is more concerned when Newton suddenly buries his head tight against Hermann’s chest and looks like he’s about to sob. Hermann gives him time to collect himself and when he emerges, well, of course he kisses him. He would always reward him for the courage of his truth and for resurfacing to the real world.

Hermann looks up, smiling at the statue. It had been Newton’s idea to come and visit it again, to break up the monotony of packing, and there had been so much bloody packing. Most of their items were ready to go, but it was coupled with Newton’s items released from storage and the scant collection from their labs during their k-science days. Hermann and Newton agreed not to open them until they were settled in a new place. Hopefully not Maine. But, at this point, Hermann would go anywhere for him. And he meant that.

They walked away same as they had arrived, which was far too close for platonic affection, disregarding all rules of P.D.A. Hermann hummed at the thought, glancing back once more. He smiled because of the numerous thick-framed glasses that were displayed all around Mako’s feet, spilling over into the fountain, and resting neatly on the stone ledge that ringed it. These surprise tokens. He wondered if Newton’s pair were still amongst them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read that Tendo's grandfather, while he was dying, told him as hi final words, "Endure this."
> 
> Look! They are together! They had some food. I'm sure they drank something at some point. And they're getting married. Mission accomplished folks.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	26. I Think We've Earned A Happy Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's. HERE!! Wedding time, boys!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first and only chapter title that comes from Hermann's words instead of Newton's. So look out for that!

There’s a buzz from the dresser as Hermann leans forward, fussing again with the knot. He hasn’t had to wear one of these in ages and it feels ridiculous. This is ridiculous. Newton can’t tie a tie to save his life, why should he—

“ _Gott_ , _still halten._ ”

Hermann huffs, dropping his hands as Bastien stands behind him. As the youngest, it is a grave injustice that he has sprouted three inches above Hermann. His limbs circle around and tug the lines of the bowtie in place.

“ _Wann hast du das gelernt_?“ Hermann asks softly, pushing his chin up to make room for Bastien’s hands. His baby-faced baby brother smiles in the reflection, looking smug. Perhaps he has earned it. He does seem to know what he’s doing, at least.

The room is mostly quiet as Hermann, Bastien, and Dieterich get ready. Someone has put on music, because there are people besides Hermann who apparently find complete silence to be criminal—and he is about to go face such a man very shortly. The tune is delicate, because it is still an important day for Hermann, so the least they can do is keep him somewhat happy. Hermann doesn’t mind. He only minds because he’s aware of his shaking hands and wipes them down the side of his slacks twice. He should not be this nervous. And yet, he is.

The buzz from his phone draws his attention again and Hermann steps back once Bastien is done with his bowtie. They regard it in the mirror, both turning when Dieterich curses profoundly, standing up and dabbing quickly at his thigh.

“ _Bekomme keine auf dem Teppich_ ,” Hermann says absently, reaching out for his phone as his older brother glares at his back. Hermann glances up and smiles a little bashfully. “ _Was? Ich will keine flecken._ ”

“ _Aber meine Hose…._ ” Dieterich motions towards the champagne spilled on his trouser and Hermann waves him off, checking his messages. Another one dings up just as he’s about to read them.

**Tendo (15:14):** Real quick, doing the 30 min checkup. Alls good. Got him dressed up. Lost Uncle Ilia for a hot sec with Jakob. They’re back  & crisis averted

**Tendo (15:21):** Sorry about the champagne Brother. Was NOT thinking. Newt keeps saying its fine but Im a fuckin idiot sometimes. He’s being good. Knew youd like to hear that.

**Tendo (15:22):** Newt said double apologize for the champagne. did something happen with D?

Hermann scoffs gently. There was no reason to get ready in separate rooms if Newton was going to check up on him. He licks his upper lip and shoots a text back.

**Hermann (15:24)** : Good to hear. As long as you are all having fun, that’s all the matters. And he is good. I won’t ask you to share that with him.

**Tendo (15:24):** k ;)

Hermann sits down in the corner chair again, crossing one leg (bad) over the other one (good). He tucks his phone into his breast pocket as he watches Bastien fuss with Dieterich, both of them dabbing adamantly at the stain as they bicker with each other. It’s the sort’ve bickering thick with too much brotherly love. Hermann rests his chin on his hand, nearly choked with a strange emotion he hasn’t felt in a very long time. A buzzing anxiety, however positive it is. A desire, truly. He closes his eyes a moment and lets himself drift over.

Their room is not nearly as loud as Hermann has imagined, with Tendo, Karla, _and_ Newt all together. There’s music for them, too, of course—Newt insisted on picking the soundtrack, Hermann’s almost certain of it, and only four ironic songs have cropped up. The rest of the songs just keep a certain tempo to his life or bring fond memories to the surface.

Hermann can see Newton sitting on the counter, his legs dangling back and forth to the beat as Tendo does up Karla’s bowtie—yes, they are all wearing them, and bot rooms are equally blessed to have at least one person who knows how to fix them. Hermann is a little jealous that they had Tendo. The man is a resolute professional.

Tendo and Karla had finished up the champagne, which Newt had declined gently at first, more insistently when they innocently pressed him. Hermann imagines it was awkward, but the other two were kind and the three of them gracious, at least in the moment, and he is glad that his fiancé has them both to occupy his time. He smiles. He feels Newt smile just as he turns towards the mirror behind him.

“No peaking,” Hermann hears aloud and laughs as Newton laces his fingers in front of his eyes.

_I think you were peaking earlier, liebling._

_Hermann…._

_Fine. Fine. See you shortly._

\---

Newt stands in the corner of the kitchen, checking his cufflinks for the hundredth time. Completely unnecessary. He already has the shirt done up to the collar, Tendo’s bowtie is phenomenal, and he has on three leather bracelets to hide the very edges of his tattoos on each wrist. Because? Because he just does not need the reminder today. His shoes squeak as he shifted his weight and his index finger punches out the cufflink before slipping it back into place. Maybe he should have had, like, _one_ drink.

Ugh, no. Stomach hurts just thinking it.

After everyone gets ready and they’ve exhausted themselves looking at baby pictures from Tendo and Alison—oh god, so cute—and baby pictures from Karla and her wife Veronica—oh _god_ , so cute—Newt sends them out to go finish gathering everyone up and getting them into the garden. There aren’t a ton of people to wrangle up. Hermann and Newt, as super amazing and kick ass as they are, are not that popular. People just don’t know them and fuck everybody for their presumptions, no matter how accurate. At least the garden looks nice. At least the people are smiling. At least he can sense Hermann in the house still. At least that.

Newt was so right to wait until the early days of summer. The sun is up, there’s a breeze, there are a few scant clouds overhead that make the sky animated and alive and bold to behold, and it’s warm without being unbearable. It’s perfect. Gold fucking star, Newt.

“Oh god,” Newt says to himself, drawing the words out as he stares at the counter. His fingers move off the cufflinks to drum the top, bumping a covered tray of apps for the reception. Like, could he just nudge the cover off and hound some little crab cakes or cheese cubes or whatever the fuck was under there? Absolutely. Will he? Newt’s hand begins to shift.

“Alright!” When Dad pops up on his left, Newt jolts, same as he would as a kid trying to sneak a snack before dinner. Dad grabs his elbow and gives it a squeeze, pushing in against the nerves. They both laugh, which is good. “I think we’ve got everyone in their places. How’re you feeling?”

“Oh, me?” Christ, Newt’s voice cracks, taking on an edge. Has he always sounded this shrill? “Dad, man, I’m ecstatic.”

He is.

Honestly he is.

Honestly, he’s hoping Hermann is.

Oh _fuck._

“Breathe, buddy,” Dad says and grips his arm again. One-two-three. God, that’s so funny. Newt never realized that’s where he picked it up from. One-two-three. I. Love. You. That’s so so funny. That’s— “Hey. Newt, buddy. What’s—?”

Newt wraps his arms around Dad and squeezes him tight. Fuck, there’s so much he still needs to say. So much to apologize for. And, okay, today is so _not_ the day for it, but it bubbles up anyways because brains are fucking stupid, even if his brain is fucking insanely smart. Not the argument. Not the time f tor the argument, anyways. Like Dad would even really _allow_ the argument. Okay, but, besides that. Brains are just so stupid and Newt feels like he’s betrayed so much. He’s lost so much time. He’s a dick. He has all these words tumbling together that are almost exactly what he needs to say to find closure, even if he doesn’t directly expect to need closure with Dad. Not really. But it’s so obvious that he does. That he needs to apologize or something. He squeezes Dad and, just that. Just that simple gesture. It doesn’t matter who he is or what he has done or how big or how old he is. This is his fucking Dad. He’s transported to a kid in his arms and, it’s not the same with Herms, but it’s home. It’s safe. It’s love.

“Thanks, Dad,” he says softly.

Dad pets down the hair on the back of his head, mindful of the products, of the suit, of trying not to get tears on his son before the big moment.

“Anytime,” Dad answers.

There’s a soft step step-thunk and Newt braces himself as he pulls away, his smile watery but genuine. Dad wipes his thumb under his son’s eyes and squeezes his arm again. Once more. One-two-three.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Dad says and nods his head to the man behind Newt. “And I’ll see you out there. Hey. Congratulations.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Geiszler.”

Newt barely holds back a choked laugh when Dad insists that “Jakob” is way better than “Mr. Geiszler,” and, hell, eventually, “Dad” would be even better.

“Eventually,” Hermann answers. Newt spins right on the spot at that and thinks the surprised and open look of love that Hermann is wearing is mirrored right back on his face. He barely notices Dad stepping away and wishing them luck. “Oh, darling man.”

Newt closes the gap instantly, replacing the warm feeling of Dad with the warm feeling of Hermann. “You look amazing,” he mumbles against Hermann’s chest, earning a laugh.

“I presume you do as well, since you’re hiding your face,” Hermann says. Newt doesn’t look up right away. He doesn’t have to. He can just live here, pushing his face against the familiar embrace, the smell of mint and musty cologne and dusty chalk. Hermann rubs Newt’s back. “Are you ready?”

He supposes he can’t hide forever. And he doesn’t. Not really. Newt looks up, his face breaking into an untamed smile.

“This is it, huh?” Newt asks. “God, long time coming. Where’s our war clock at? Man, I should’ve gotten Herc to come. Announce the end and everything.”

“Oh, no,” Hermann says gently and kisses the corner of Newt’s mouth. A preview of whatever soft, gentle thing their lives are headed towards. “I’m tired of counting down to the end. No more cataclysmic crises averted at the last second, darling. No more sacrifices. I think we’ve earned a happy beginning.”

Sure, they could wait for the vows. That’s tradition, even if they are walking each other down the aisle because they can. Because they’ve earned it, damnit. Hermann’s right. Fuck traditions. Newt slips his hand up behind Hermann’s head and tugs him down, closing the distance between them. Official. Unofficial. Whatever. They have this. They have each other. They made it to eventually and he doesn’t ever want to go back.

Well, eventually. Eventually they have to break apart before Herms threatens Newt’s composure with a squeeze or a little slip of his tongue or a _moan_ , because, Jesus, that’s too good. They part, entangle their arms around each other, and face the doors that lead out to their garden.

“Do you think I can get another PhD in horticulture?” Newt asks offhandedly, looking at the crowd and speaking because if he doesn’t his nerves will reach up and strangle himself.

“I don’t care what you do, as long as you’re happy. And it doesn’t take you away from me.”

“I wonder if I can start a band.”

“Perhaps. Go back to the gardening, love.”

“Fine. I wonder if I can make a sentient plant.”

“I wonder if I can call this whole thing off,” Hermann chides.

Newt squeezes Hermann’s arm. One-two-three. Hermann looks down at him and smiles, and they hear the soft intro to their march. Hermann instantly squeezes his arm back.

\---

Hermann refuses to have a long ceremony. Their officiant, a lovely woman they met in the neighborhood who has proven to endear herself to the two eccentric scientists and may well be on her way to becoming a life-long friend, knows this. She speeds them along, cements their bonds, and offers both Hermann and Newt a handkerchief when each man starts tearing up during their vows. They kiss. And they kiss a little longer when their friends and family cheer for them, leaving the small and overly-decorated alter with matching silver bands on their fingers.

The reception spreads out around the house, becoming as much a house warming event as it is a celebration and feast for their wedding, since it is the first time the Geiszler-Gottlieb’s have managed to invite people to visit them. Someone jokes that they are doing their best to disappear into obscurity and Newt puffs up his chest and declares them to be “rock stars, dude! Fuck that noise. Like, seriously, just wait till you see what we’re doing next, man!” Hermann laughs from the dining table, nursing his single glass of white wine he has allowed himself. He spots Nate Lambert and Jules Reyes sequestered in the corner and raises his glass to them. It was kind that they came, even if Jake was pulled away on important business.

A slightly frumpled and slightly sweaty Newt makes his way back over, pushing his way into Hermann’s lap. He discards his jacket and the bowtie is already just strands laid down across either side of his neck. He doesn’t seem to care. Hermann doesn’t care either and tugs his loose, as though finally given permission. They don’t need glasses chiming from their guests to spurn them into a kiss, which they share happily.

“Are you having fun?”

“Loads of it,” Hermann answers honestly. “Are you?”

“Way more than I thought I was going to.”

“Did you speak to the Rangers yet?” he asks, nudging Newt’s attention over to the corner. Newt looks and rolls his eyes, deciding it is far more important to graze his lips across Hermann’s temple. “Well. I’ll thank them later.”

“We’ll thank them all later. Who cares?”

Hermann laughs and grabs up Newton’s hand, lacing their fingers together and admiring the look of two wedding bands side-by-side. “I love you,” he says, staring at their hands.

“Thank god,” Newt answers and tilts Hermann’s head up insistently. They may look like bloody teenagers, necking with wild abandon. Well, they had decades to make up for. Newt grinned against Hermann’s mouth. “I love you too, dude.”

\---

Jake shifts in the chair again, easing some of the tension coiling up his back. He’s been sitting there for something like thirty-seven hours or something ridiculous. More or less. A man has to pee and all, but, other than that? Right there. In the chair. Waiting. He rests his chin on his hand as he taps the video feed on his tablet, watching the recording of the wedding Nate had hooked up for him. God, bless those two for going, honestly. Like, it was a bit ridiculous. Herm and Newt were just nightmares in their own right and they’d pulled some serious shit. Seriously bad shit. But, whatever, apparently they’re on their way to being the forgive and forget type. Jake isn’t sure how far along he’s supposed to be on that front, but the fact that Jules and Nate accepted the invite probably means he should shore up his attitude and get there.

Eventually.

It looks like a proper cute wedding. Like, they’re so happy? Fine, Christ, Jake smiles as he watches it, nobody around to put on a show for. Not yet, anyways. He tucks up his foot on the edge of the seat to get more comfortable, biting back another smile when Newt fumbles over his vows and Hermann wipes at his shiny face. So in love. So gross. He wants to give them shit, just cause. Maybe he was getting there. Forgiving them. Maybe.

For the most part, all the machines around are always making noises, and Jake learned pretty quick to tune them out. They just became his soundtrack for a while, little blips and bleeps and air respirator and the odd zum from the transfer cables. It was a lot and it was annoying and his brain smooths it out until it became nothing to even notice. It just was.

Right up until there’s a noise that registers.

Jake sits up and sets the tablet down on a side table, nearly missing it. It almost crashes and, in that moment, he doesn’t really think he’d care if it fell. Jake rushes up to the side of the bed and took up a pale slender hand before he notices eyes trained on him. Yeah, fine, there’s a blue to them that’s foreign, but this whole thing is foreign. It’s impossible. It’s amazing. Jake has to blink too many times to clear his own eyes so he can see the soft smile and when he feels the buzz along their newly forged Drift Bond snap into place, he just about loses it. He won’t. He was trained better than that. But just to feel something that’s not the numbing nothingness as they pieced her back together nearly kills him too. Jake carefully squeezes her hand and smiles.

“Hey, sis. Welcome back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys! We did it! We fixed the things and we made it happen and just. We did it!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.


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